(A kind correspondent sent me this in an email. I'm hoping it's OK of me to reproduce it. Last time he sent something, and I asked him, he said it was OK. This time I'm trying not to bother him. But he'll probably get this via RSS and let me know if I've done wrong.)
The Sasha Frere-Jones quote about Godard reminded me of this, from The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula LeGuin:
(context: Selver, an alien who until recently didn't really have a conception of murder or violence, has started leading a guerilla movement that is fighting back against their human colonizers; in a recent action, the man Lyubov - Selver's only real human friend, who treated him like a person - has been killed):
“Lyubov’s too, you know. He’s dead—your ‘friend Lyubov’.” Selver did not understand the idiom. He had learned murder, but of guilt he knew little beyond the name. As his gaze locked for a moment with Gosse’s pale, resentful stare, he felt afraid. A sickness rose up in him, a mortal chill. He tried to put it away from him, shutting his eyes a moment. At last he said, “Lyubov is my friend, and so not dead.”
which is less profound than SFJ, but perhaps more accessible to anyone who has had a friend.
