Irwin Epstein, PhD – Professor Emeritus (City University of New York) enjoyed a half-century, award-winning international career as a health and mental health educator and researcher on topics ranging from neonatal abnormality and abortion decision-making in London to cancer patients experiencing “good death” in Hong Kong. A Fulbright senior scholar at the University of Wales (Cardiff) at age 30, his most recent plenary address in 2021 was to an international conference in Beijing and Hong Kong, and simultaneously translated from English into Chinese, Russian and Vietnamese for Zoom audiences elsewhere. The title “Practice research: a ‘virtue friendship’ with ever-changing definitions”, concerned the range of possible relationships between professional practitioners and academic researchers.  

In semi-retirement, as a devoted carer for his wife Fran—a retired social worker and courageous cancer battler—Epstein found himself writing a memoir about his most significant friendships with other men—men who played important roles over the course of his life in his own development as single father, husband, educator, scholar and most importantly as a human being.

A “coming of old-age” story? Perhaps. But raised in an uneducated, lower middle-class, Jewish home in previously unfashionable Brooklyn, by a racist, paranoid, homophobic father and a psychologically sensitive mother, Epstein was destined to become a sociologist (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1969) rather than an M.D.—his immigrant parents’ fantasy.

At age 5, in a misguided attempt at father-son intimacy, he was told that his father’s “worst fear” was that he would grow up to be a “homo”. He didn’t. But this memoir is not a story of heterosexual male triumphalism. It’s merely about friendship among men. 

Leaving home, Epstein was freed from the psychological torments that plagued  men like D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Mann who struggled mightily throughout their lives with their unresolved sexual attractions to other men. Without question and to our benefit, these two gifted writers of their generation, channeled their homophobic anxieties into great literature for which they ultimately achieved and deserved both literary fame and compassion. Instead of Lawrence and Mann, the stories in this book, pay homage to the writings on aging and friendship of the Roman statesman Cicero and of the Triestine Jew and modernist writer Italo Svevo who taught James Joyce Italian and served as Joyce’s model for Leopold Bloom.   

Eighty-five years old, and not claiming literary equivalency with any of the above, Epstein’s memoir simply claims to be a collection of tales of male friendship–some humorous and some tragic involving men of different races, religions and sexual orientations—men who gave and still give his life meaning. Sadly, all but one of the men whose stories are featured in this book are no longer alive. However, the telling of their stories is intended to give their lives meaning to those who didn’t know them. They involve love and loss as well as hope and renewal.

Unexpectedly, in writing Men as Friends, Epstein wondered about a few men with whom he had long, significant, professional and personal friendships but couldn’t really say he “loved”. And they probably couldn’t really love him. Why not? 

The answer to this seemingly simple but inherently complex question came to him in the writing. It will come to readers in the reading.  Quirky but not queer, the book is a testament to deep and lasting friendships among men and meant to be read by men as well as women who still value men. Happily for Epstein, his oldest male friend remains alive. They’ve remained loving friends since their teens. A Jewish sociologist whose parents wanted him to become a doctor and an Italian-American clinical psychologist whose parents wanted an engineer.  

Practice research: a “virtue friendship” with ever-changing definitions

June 20, 2022