Excerpt from The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The mother's old fur coat is the kind of detail writing teachers like to point out to students, one of those telling details—like how Simenon's daughter got her gun—that are found in abundance in life but are mostly absent from student fiction.

The poet got into her car, a vintage 1967 tomato-red Cougar, and turned on the ignition.


In the first writing course I ever taught, after I'd emphasized the importance of detail, a student raised his hand and said, I totally disagree. If you want a lot of details, you should watch television.

A comment I would come to see was not really as dumb as it seemed.

The same student also accused me (his words were writers like you) of trying to scare other people by making writing seem much harder than it was.

Why would we want to do that? I asked.

Oh come on, he said. Isn't it obvious? The pie is only so large.


My own first writing teacher used to tell her students that if there was anything else they could do with their lives instead of becoming writers, any other profession, they should do it.


Last night, in the Union Square station, a man was playing "La Vie en Rose" on a flute, molto giocoso. Lately I've become vulnerable to earworms, and sure enough the song, in the flutist's peppy rendition, has been pestering me all day. They say the way to get rid of an earworm is to listen a couple of times to the whole song through. I listened to the most famous version, by Edith Piaf, of course, who wrote the lyrics and first performed the song in 1945. Now it's the Little Sparrow's strange, bleating, soul-of-France voice that won't stop.

Also in the Union Square station, a man with a sign: Homeless Toothless Diabethee. That's a good one, a commuter said as he tossed change into the man's paper cup.

Excerpted from The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. Copyright © 2018 by Sigrid Nunez. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.