![]() ![]() The Friendly, by contrast, is sporting, even generous. The proverbial Dixie compliment is all passive aggression. Somehow, the flipped order makes all the difference. ![]() So, in reviewing screenwriter William Goldman’s book Which Lie Did I Tell?, he speaks of Goldman’s “ lunatic candor.” Call it an Unfriendly.)įriend’s way of saying the nice thing before the mean thing is the Yankee rejoinder to the Southern art of saying the mean thing before the nice thing (“she’s the pudgiest little thing, bless her heart” “he’s dumb as a brick, God love him”). So, for instance, he found Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke, who apparently started talking to her dog while in the middle of a phone conversation with Friend, to be “ appealingly distractible.” The Lonely Planet travel-guide-publishing company, chaotic in its early days, was “ disarmingly ad hoc.” A dim-witted treasure hunter’s analogies are “ appealingly muddled.” One of Giorgio Armani’s executives is “lovingly ferocious,” while the Italian designer himself evinces a “compelling neediness.” Friend was struck, too, by the “ ingratiating reserve” of death-row warden Vernell Crittenden.įriend isn’t proprietary about the method, happily quoting a comedy writer who describes Garry Shandling as “ marvelously self-absorbed.” (Occasionally, Friend finds himself in the position of saying something that could be construed as complimentary about someone he clearly looks down on and tempers it with a negative. ![]() Given the happy coincidence that Friend’s very name jibes with the chummily gimlet-eyed attitude of his prose, let’s call it the Friendly.įriendlies seem to crop up in particular in those profiles and articles for which Friend logged enough time with the subject to both gain insight and develop empathy. In this week’s New Yorker, staff writer Tad Friend describes the actress Anna Faris as a “ winsome bubblehead.” How endearingly predictable! We have long admired this technique, sporadically deployed by Friend, of accurately describing someone without being cruel by blunting a sharp descriptor with a modifying sheath. ![]()
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