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Title details for We Should Not Be Friends by Will Schwalbe - Available

We Should Not Be Friends

The Story of a Friendship

by Will Schwalbe
ebook
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A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A warm, funny, irresistible memoir that follows an improbable and life-changing college friendship over the course of forty years—from the best-selling author of The End of Your Life Book Club • “A rare view of male friendship.”—NPR
“Moving…salted with Schwalbe’s well-established literary intelligence and a palpable empathy.” —The New York Times Book Review
By the time Will Schwalbe was a junior at college, he had already met everyone he cared to know: the theater people, writers, visual artists and comp lit majors, and various other quirky characters including the handful of students who shared his own major, Latin and Greek. He also knew exactly who he wanted to avoid: the jocks. The jocks wore baseball caps and moved in packs, filling boisterous tables in the dining hall, and on the whole seemed to be another species entirely, one Will might encounter only at his own peril. 
All this changed dramatically when Will collided with Chris Maxey, known to just about everyone as Maxey. Maxey was physically imposing, loud, and a star wrestler who was determined to become a Navy SEAL (where he would later serve for six years). Thanks to the strangely liberating circumstances of a little-known secret society at Yale, the two forged a bond that would become a mainstay of each other’s lives as they repeatedly lost and found each other and themselves in the years after graduation. 
From New Haven to New York City, from Hong Kong and Panama to a remarkable school on an island in the Bahamas—through marriages and a divorce, triumphs and devastating losses—We Should Not Be Friends tracks an extraordinary friendship over decades of challenge and change. Schwalbe’s marvelous new work is, at its heart, a joyful testament to the miracle of human connection—and how if we can just get past our preconceptions, we may find some of our greatest friends.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 21, 2023

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780525654940

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780525654940
      • File size: 1051 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      September 1, 2022

      In college at Yale, Schwalbe gravitated to the literary/theatrical crowd, so his friendship with boisterous star wrestler Chris Maxey was an anomaly. Schwalbe, author of the Entertainment Weekly and BookPage best-booked The End of Your Life Book Club, tracks their friendship over four decades.

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      January 1, 2023
      A veteran book editor recounts a long-lasting bond between seeming opposites. "From the start it was clear that Maxey and I should not be friends," writes Schwalbe, the author of The End of Your Life Book Club. Over time, the author, who "was friends with most of the other gays and lesbians" on campus at Yale, realized that his eventual friend Chris Maxey, a boisterous "jock," was far less prejudiced that the author assumed. Their friendship grew only to be nearly killed when, seemingly as a joke, Maxey repeatedly shouted an anti-gay slur at other players during a beer-soaked pool game. Schwalbe was understandably hurt and angry, mostly at himself "for not saying anything, and for letting down my guard." However, as the author demonstrates, Maxey is a complex, thoughtful individual. Though a devotee of neoconservative military historian Robert Kagan and fully embedded in the macho culture of athletes, Maxey recognized his transgression even as he committed it. Life went on, and while Schwalbe and his other friends entered the arts and the professions, Maxey became a Navy SEAL, taking part in bloody operations in Panama and elsewhere. He married an admiral's daughter, left the service, raised a family, and built a private school on the island of Eleuthera after a brief stint in corporate life. Schwalbe candidly recounts other misreadings of intention, the weathering of life events and illnesses, and finally, nearing 60, their accommodations to each other--though, on Schwalbe's part, a reticence about expressing affection. Across decades, both men have taught each other tolerance for difference. "Maxey had helped me realize that people you don't like aren't always who you think they are, even when you are quite sure--and what's more, even if they are, they may want to change," writes the author. An affecting, rewarding story of an unlikely friendship that, against all seeming odds, has endured.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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