There is a general assumption that men and women operate very differently when it comes to friendships: whereas for women the focus is on emotional intimacy and support with a smaller number of friends, men tend to have more friends but their friendships are more transactional and based on shared activities and interests.
There may be some truth in this, but it’s interesting to note that literature tells a different story, with close bonds between male characters playing a key role in narratives from the earliest times. In the Iliad, the epic poem about the Trojan war attributed to Homer (C7th/8th BC), the close relationship between the two Greek warriors Achilles and Patroclus – which is sometimes interpreted as sexual – plays a central role. When Patroclus is killed by the Trojan prince, Hector, Achilles takes revenge and, ignoring the code of nobility, having killed Hector mistreats his corpse by dragging it around the city walls and withholding the body from his grief-stricken family until the gods intervene.
Similarly passionate and loyal male friendships also appear in Shakespeare’s plays. In Romeo and Juliet Mercutio is killed when he tries to interfere and protect his close friend Romeo from being attacked by his sworn enemy Tybalt. Horatio remains loyal to Hamlet throughout the play, and in the final scene has to be dissuaded by the dying Hamlet from kiling himself. And in Antony and Cleopatra Enobarbus, Antony’s loyal supporter and close friend, only abandons Antony towards the end of the play when he appears to be finished, subsequently dying of guilt and sorrow.
Fast forward more than 400 years to 2020 and Andrew O’Hagan’s novel Mayflies, winner of the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose. Inspired by events in O’Hagan’s own life, Mayflies is a story of male friendship which opens with an epigraph from W B Yeats’ poem ‘The Municipal Gallery Revisited’:
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.
The novel is divided into two sections. The first part is set in the summer of 1986. Eighteen year old Jimmy, a quiet bookish eighteen year old and the narrator of the novel, has finished school and a long summer stretches in front of him before he goes to university. His close friend, Tully Dawson, decides that they should go to Manchester for the weekend ‘”for what is certain to be the best gig in history” – a celebration of punk rock, to be held at the new exhibition centre, G-Mex.‘ This was a real gig that took place as the culmination of the Festival of the Tenth Summer, held in Manchester in July 1986, with the acts including those listed by Tully: ‘”on the Saturday it’s New Order, the Smiths, the Fall, Magazine“‘. O’Hagan captures the sheer excitement of these young music fans leaving Glasgow for a weekend to go to this not-to-be-missed-event. As Tully says to Jimmy: ‘”I don’t want to be funny, but if we miss it we might as well be dead“‘.
Tully is two years Jimmy’s senior, a gap that Jimmy notes ‘makes a big difference when you’re eighteen‘. Jimmy’s naivety and lack of supportive family structure – in the first chapter he tells Tully that he has ‘”divorced [his] mum and dad“‘ – is contrasted with Tully’s experience and closeness to his family: ‘”Stay at mine whenever you like. If you don’t want to stay just come over for dinner. My mum loves you.”‘
The second part of the book is set 31 years later in the autumn of 2017. Jimmy is now James, a published writer living in London. Tully is still in Scotland; having gone to university as a mature student – encouraged by James – he is now Head of English, teaching in the tough East End of Glasgow. On his way home after a dinner to celebrate a friend’s new novel, James receives a late night text from Tully: ‘Can you speak?’
There is a seismic shift in the novel with Tully’s news in the subsequent phone call, along with the request he makes to James that will test their friendship – and James’s loyalty – to the limit. But although the tone darkens inexorably, there is still plenty of light, life and laughter in the second section. The book’s title Mayflies is a reference to the insects found commonly in the UK around freshwater which have notoriously short llves, sometimes only living for a few hours, yet in that short lifespan they manage to pack in a lot of living, both displaying themselves and breeding before dying. Likewise, in both sections of the novel the two friends live life to the full.
And food is a part of that enjoyment of life in the second part of the novel. James and Tully, and their wives, dine on ricotta and almond pastries in Sicily, and oysters and lobster in Switzerland. But an earlier meal is just shared by Tully and James: pizza followed by cherry pie whilst saying in a caravan in Seamill on the North Ayrshire coast.
I made cherry pie in an earlier post , so pizza it had to be. If you’re going to make the whole pizza – base and tomato sauce – from scratch, it takes time, but it’s time well spent (an important message of the novel).
PIZZA BETWEEN FRIENDS
Ingredients: (makes 2 large pizzas)
For the base
250g plain white flour
250g strong white flour
1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1 teaspoon easy-blend dried yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
For the tomato sauce
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed or finely chopped
Salt and pepper
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
Method:
Place the flours in a large bowl and stir in the salt. Then mix in the yeast. Add the oil and 325ml warm water and mix to a rough dough. Knead either by hand for about 10 minutes, or using a food mixer for 5 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic – it should bounce back if you prod it.
Place the dough in a clean lightly oiled bowl and cover. You can just leave it to rise in a warm place for 1-2 hours, but I find that giving it a long slow rise in the fridge overnight works particularly well when making pizza. It seems to give the dough a slight sourness which I think tastes great. However, if you leave it in the fridge overnight, you will need to take it out for a couple of hours to bring it back to room temperature before going on to the next phase.
Once the dough has risen to about twice its original size, turn it onto a lightly floured work surface and ‘knock it back’ by punching or poking the air out of it so it reverts to its original size. It is then ready to be shaped into pizza bases.
Divide the dough into two pieces; take each piece in turn and pat and stretch it out to a large round (you can use a rolling pin, but I find it easier just to use my hands). Place each base on a large baking sheet and leave to rest whilst you make the tomato sauce. At this point preheat your oven to its maximum temperature.
In a medium-sized saucepan cook the onions gently in the oil over a medium heat until they are softened. Add the garlic and cook for another minute, making sure it doesn’t brown. Then add the chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper and sugar, and bring the mixture to a gentle simmer. Cover with a lid, leaving a small opening, so that the sauce reduces to a thick consistency. This will take about 20 minutes. You can either use it as it is, or blend to remove any lumps (my preference).
Spread a thin layer of sauce over each pizza base, leaving a wide rim around the circumference. And then add whatever toppings you like: traditional Italian pizzas include mozzarella (with the exception of the marinara pizza, created with store cupboard ingredients only for sailors at sea), but the rest is up to you: mushrooms, ham, egg, spinach, salami… keep it simple though, so the flavours can sing.
Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes until the base is crisp, the mozzarella (if using) has melted and other ingredients are bubbling and hot.
