On what being a true friend might look like, and on readers being in friendship with writers.

A couple of years ago, I came across a concept that I thought was attributed to Aristotle: a true friend is someone who interprets you generously. I’ve searched for the quote since, with little success*. (Maybe I should start every post with a misattributed quote that is actually just something I made up — I think that might be quite amusing.)

A true friend might not understand you fully, but a true friend understands what you meant. Sometimes we are ineloquent. Sometimes we fail to elucidate what we mean. Sometimes we blatantly misspeak, or through fear of misspeaking do not speak at all. But when you do speak, a true friend sees through the stuttering, the awkwardness, the bluster and the confusion, and takes you as you are. They hold goodwill for you and trust your intentions. A true friend interprets you generously.

There’s a quote from George Saunders’ ‘What writers really do when they write’ that really moves me: ‘Another reason you’re crying: you’ve just realised that Tolstoy thought well of you – he believed that his own notions about life here on earth would be discernible to you, and would move you. Tolstoy imagined you generously, you rose to the occasion.’ 

As a reader, in some ways you enter into a friendship with a writer. You attempt to understand what they are trying to convey. You look to grasp the overall vision, filling in any missing descriptions or words. But readers are not always true friends (in the way I am using the phrase). This might not be out of spite, but simply due to us all having different perspectives and having had different lives that inform how we view and understand things. I’m wondering how valuable it really is for a reader to interpret a writer the way the writer meant. Isn’t part of the beauty of observing art that we can put our own perspective on things?

Does it even make sense to talk too much about what a writer meant? (What) do writers even know? Do writers write with readers in mind? Am I to be pleased, disgruntled, surprised, if and when you take something different from my piece from that which I had in mind?

There is certainly something beautiful about generous interpretation. It requires a sort of humility, a dissolution of ego: an understanding that what I took from what you said might be less important than what it was you meant. And an understanding in turn from the writer: you are your own person, reading my words, and may understand them differently to how I meant them, but I trust you to be generous with your interpretation. ∎

*Reading more into this, I find that some of this might be linked to Iris Murdoch. I might do a follow-up piece after some investigating.