The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

I believe we must all retain, throughout our whole lives, a powerful memory of those early moments of life, a time when we were as much animal as human, the overwhelming feelings of helplessness and vulnerability and mute fear, and the yearning for the protection that our instinct tells us is there, if we could just cry loudly enough. Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die in that state, and seeing innocence violated in the form of cruelty to a mere duck can seem like the most barbaric act in the world. I know people who are outraged by this sentiment, calling it cynical, misanthropic, and perverse. But I believe the day when we are no longer capable of feeling it will be a terrible day for every living being, that our downward slide into violence and barbarity will be only that much quicker. •

On the fate of the multitude of unwanted dogs, Lucy reflects: They do us the honor of treating us like gods, and we respond by treating them like things.

True human goodness can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Let it be seen, then, how the human race treats those that have been placed at its mercy.

That was another thing I noticed about the students: how self-righteous they’ve become, how intolerant they are of any weakness or flaw in a writer’s character. And I’m not talking about blatant racism or misogyny. I’m talking about any tiny sign of insensitivity or bias, any proof of psychological trouble, neurosis, narcissism, obsessiveness, bad habits—any eccentricity. If a writer didn’t come across as the kind of person they’d want to have for a friend, which invariably meant someone progressive and clean-living, fuck ’em. I once had an entire class agree that it didn’t matter how great a writer Nabokov was, a man like that—a snob and a pervert, as they saw him—shouldn’t be on anyone’s reading list. A novelist, like any good citizen, has to conform, and the idea that a person could write exactly what they wanted regardless of anyone else’s opinion was unthinkable to them.