Positive3amIn his 1992 review of the book, the novelist and critic Gary Indiana observes, “The fact that people are terrible, frail, solipsistic, fickle, and even capable of playing God with their best friends’ lives is not exactly news to a writer.” There is every strain of weakness and deficiency in the one hundred vignettes that make up To the Friend. ... Duty seems alien to Guibert. Fantasies of treachery tint most of the relationships depicted in his stories yet the passages in To the Friend that feature Muzil gesture toward an ideal of accountability ... In AIDS narratives and diaries, self-documentation functions less to record the singularity of the individual, and Guibert’s writing consistently demonstrates his own entanglement with others ... Guibert’s writing has always understood the narrative weight of secrets, but in To the Friend, he uncovers the limits to concealment and disclosure. He poses a scenario in which the writer cannot simply devise one last reveal to forestall the end. \'Obviously the writer must die writing?\' The question comes from Guibert’s diary, amidst other entries contemporaneous with the composition of To the Friend. There is no redemption for the author. The last chapter is harrowing. His body has become as thin as it was when he was a child, he warns. His style, which has been immodestly ornate throughout the novel, approaches dismal restraint. \'My book is closing in on me,\' Guibert writes. Perhaps, the friend addressed in the title was the book itself, all along.
