EXCERPT FROM

FRIENDSHIP
Spring 2021

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At the moment, friendship, particularly among women, is feted—friendship is “in,” even—as a positive, necessary part of life, as more important than romantic love, and, often, as a culturally undervalued institution around which there are “no scripts” or recognition for its highs and lows.

But when dramatized, friendship often becomes retrospective: it’s about the friends you left behind, whether because of a falling-out or a death. These are friends of childhood and school days. These are relationships that are mourned, but that are also escaped. Rather than being a necessary part of life, friendship is a dangerous alternative to normal living—a kind of world of lotus-eaters, dwelling forever in the summer space between childhood and adulthood. To flirt with the intensity of these friendships as an adult invites trouble, the same way that when our schooling is over, summer can no longer be treated as an extended vacation.

Which is very strange, because, after all, what could be easier than friendship? In theory, nothing. Friendship partakes neither of sex’s private fears and needs nor of the forward-looking speculation inherent in couple­dom. Questions of commitment, children, shared finances—these are unimportant. It is a relationship that consists almost entirely in shared history, loyalty, and an ongoing pleasure in each other’s company. Friendship asks only that you be yourself. In philosophical treatments of friendship, it can often be elevated to the highest form of human relationships, even if its perfect form is rare. In The Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant compares the true friend to a black swan: something that “actually exists here and there” but which you don’t see every day, or perhaps ever in your lifetime. It’s a very different story, however, when we cast an eye toward fiction. If romantic love has the marriage plot, the friendship plot is summed up by Langston Hughes in “Poem”:

I loved my friend.

He went away from me.

There’s nothing more to say.

The poem ends,

Soft as it began—

I loved my friend.

Not every story with a marriage in it is a marriage plot, and not every story with friends is a friendship plot. When friendship exists in the background, it’s unremarkable but generally uncomplicated. But when friendship becomes the plot, then the only story to tell is about how the friendship ended.

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POSTSCRIPT

Lapham’s Quarterly will be taking an editorial break while we finish work on our new digital archive of back issues, but we will be returning later this month with new readings and new episodes of The World in Time.

Join LQ at Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center
for this year’s Arendt Forum, October 15-17, 2026.

Human solidarity commands us to understand the holes of oblivion and the world of the dying as the central issues of our political life.

—Hannah Arendt

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EXCERPT FROM

THE SEA
Summer 2013

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By February 22, I had made the circuit of the Southern Ocean in a high latitude and traversed it in such a manner as to leave not the least room for the possibility of there being a continent, unless near the pole and out of the reach of navigation. By twice visiting the tropical sea I had not only settled the situation of some old discoveries but made there many new ones, and left very little more to be done even in that part. Thus I flatter myself that the intention of the voyage has in every respect been fully answered: the Southern Hemisphere sufficiently explored and a final end put to the searching after a southern continent, which has at times engrossed the attention of some of the maritime powers for near two centuries past, and been a favorite theory among the geographers of all ages.

That there may be a continent near the pole I will not deny; on the contrary, I am of opinion there is, and that we have seen part of it. If anyone should have resolution and perseverance to clear up this point by proceeding farther than I have done, I shall not envy him the honor of the discovery, but I will be bold to say that the world will not be benefited by it.

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Andrea Wulf on The Traveler: One Man’s Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris, a narrative and intellectual biography of the German polymath George Forster. This unabridged, Substack edition of the episode includes an epilogue about George Forster’s Parisian exile during the tumult of the French Revolution. The lightly abridged, free version is available here and on most podcast channels.

The Rest Is History
Apoorva Tadepalli
Holdout buildings, medieval abortion, and corporate raves.

Our digest of readings and obituaries is now on Substack.

Extracts: On Flesh
Grace Andreasen
A collage of passages and images from the Fall 2016 issue.

“Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.” —Willem de Kooning, 1949

“Nothing, in fact, is less common and less communicable, and therefore more securely shielded against the visibility and audibility of the public realm, than what goes on within the confines of the body.” —Hannah Arendt, 1958

ENCORE

Daniel Mendelsohn on his new translation of The Odyssey. Lewis H. Lapham on his childhood reading of Moby Dick, his greenhorn voyages, and a doomed shipwreck hunt in the early 1960s that Lapham wrote about for The Saturday Evening Post.

Join LQ at the Arendt Forum, October 15-17, 2026.

EXCERPT FROM

MAGIC SHOWS
Summer 2012

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And because, as they say, all like things being applied to their like are made of the same natures, and also every patient, subject, and thing that receives into itself the act of any agent is endowed with the nature of that agent and made conatural with it. Hence they think that to this vivification, or making alive, certain herbs and magical confections (such as, they say, are made of the ashes of the phoenix and the cast skin of a snake) do much conduce, which indeed to many may seem fabulous and to some impossible, unless it could be accounted approved by an historical faith. For we read of some that have been drowned in water, others cast into the fire or put upon the fire, others slain in war, and others otherwise tried—and all these, after a few days, were alive again. Apuleius, relating the manner of these kinds of restorings to life, says of Zachla the Egyptian prophet that the prophet, being favorable, laid a certain herb upon the mouth of the body of a young man, being dead, and another upon his breast; then, turning toward the east, or rising of the propitious sun, he prayed silently (a great assembly of people striving to see it), when, in the first place, the breast of the dead man did heave, then a beating in his veins, then his body filled with breath, after which the body rose and the young man spoke. If these accounts are true, the dying souls must, sometimes lying hid in their bodies, be oppressed with vehement ecstasies and be freed from all bodily action; so that the life, sense, and motion forsake the body, and also that the man is not yet truly dead but lies stunned, and dead, as it were, for a certain time. And this is often found, that in times of pestilence many that are carried for dead to the graves to be buried, revive again. It is said that a man, by reason of a fall from a high place or great noise or long staying under water, may fall into a swoon, which may continue forty-eight hours, and so may lay as if he were dead, his face being very green. And in the same place there is mention made of a man that buried a man who seemed to be dead seventy-two hours after his seeming decease and so killed him because he buried him alive. And there are given signs whereby it may be known who are alive, although they seem to be dead, and indeed will die unless there be some means used to recover them, as phlebotomy, or some other cure. And these are such as very seldom happen. This is the manner by which we understand magicians and physicians do raise dead men to life, as they that were tried by the stinging of serpents were by the nation of the Marsi and the Psilli restored to life. We may conceive that such kind of ecstasies may continue a long time, although a man be not truly dead, as it is in dormice and crocodiles and many other serpents, which sleep all winter, and are in such a dead sleep that they can scarce be awakened with fire. And I have often seen a dormouse dissected and continue immovable, as if she were dead, until she was boiled, and when put into boiling water the dissected members did show life.

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POSTSCRIPT: THANK YOU

It has been a dizzying week here in the editorial gondola of Lapham’s Quarterly. Back in 2007, before publishing the Quarterly’s inaugural issue, States of War (Winter 2008), Lewis Lapham spent a year preparing for the launch—stocking up on propane canisters, reviewing the designs for the silk balloon, fitting out the gondola with a spyglass and anemometer, seeking patrons, hiring an able-minded crew possessing skills archival, artistic, and editorial.

With our founding editor’s example in mind, we first began working on this Substack, quietly, one year ago. This week, we invited all of our readers to join us here. Many of you sent messages. We read them all, gratefully.

In his first Preamble to that first issue, back in 2008, Lewis wrote about the relationship between editors and readers, carried on mostly through the exchange of letters:

Most of us on the editorial crew are veterans of print magazines, unaccustomed to the wind speeds of the digital, so there may be course corrections to make in the months and weeks to come. As we move from our old newsletter service to this one, some of you may receive Back Matter twice. We apologize for the transitional redundancy. We will be sending some newsletters to “paid subscribers only.” Some of those newsletters sent to paid subscribers only will subsequently be made available to all readers for a limited time. Typically, we publish here on Tuesdays and Sundays, but some months, we may slow the tempo down.

If you would prefer not to receive our newsletters by email, you can change your “newsletter delivery preferences” from “prefer email” to “prefer app” in the “notifications” section of your account settings.

Our editorial crew is too small to take on the task of comment moderation, so for now, we are restricting Substack comments to paid subscribers. But as Lewis always did, we gratefully welcome your comments, emails, and messages—whether you subsist on brandy or on mushrooms and dried fruit; whether you received your education at seven universities or in a library or aboard a ship. Thank you again for reading—and supporting—Lapham’s Quarterly.

—D.H.

EXCERPT FROM

SPORTS & GAMES
Summer 2010

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It does the more surprise me therefore that so many thousand people should be possessed with the childish passion of desiring so often to see a parcel of horses gallop, and men standing upright in their chariots. If indeed it were the swiftness of the horses, or the skill of the men that attracted them, there might be some pretense of reason for it. But it is the dress they like; it is the dress that takes their fancy. And if, in the midst of the course and contest, the different parties were to change colors, their different partisans would change sides and instantly desert the very same men and horses whom just before they were eagerly following with their eyes, as far as they could see, and shouting out their names with all their might. Such mighty charms, such wondrous power reside in the color of a paltry tunic! And this not only with the common crowd (more contemptible than the dress they espouse), but even with serious-thinking people. When I observe such men thus insatiably fond of so silly, so low, so uninteresting, so common an entertainment, I congratulate myself on my indifference to these pleasures—and am glad to employ the leisure of this season upon my books, which others throw away upon the most idle occupations.

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The Mystic River Massacre
Peter C. Mancall
How John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” descended into the cataclysm of the Anglo–Pequot war.

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ENCORE: ODYSSEYS

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