Smarter Than You Think? On the Literary Side of Friends

“Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.”
–Harold Bloom
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When you think of Friends, the perennial favorite of young people since 1994, an eternal bastion of comfort for innumerable viewers for thirty years now, living in perpetuity on network television and streaming, you think, probably, of sarcasm-laced banter in living rooms and coffee houses, Clinton-era network TV Rabelaisian chatter. You think of Chandler making quips, Monica cleaning with her special secret cleaner, Joey eating sandwiches, Ross boring everyone with his science stories and correcting people’s grammar, like E.B. White with hair gel. But, on this last viewing, my eighth or ninth (it plays all day every day on TBS), I was, for the first time, and perhaps belatedly, delighted by the show’s literary jokes.

Friends might lean broader than its contemporaries Frasier or The Larry Sanders Show (and it doesn’t have a joke quite as good as the Cheever letters of Seinfeld), but the literary references are rather clever. Phoebe brings Rachel to a class at The New School, where they study the Bronte sisters. The first thing they discuss is, of course, the patriarchy; the last thing they discuss is Robocop. Phoebe didn’t go to high school, as she was living on the street and mugging teenage boys outside of the St. Marks comic book store, so she really wants to learn; Rachel just wants to hang.

So Phoebe tricks Rachel, who doesn’t read either book, into talking about cyborgs in Bronte’s classic. And while working at a 1950s-themed novelty diner where the employees perform synchronized dances to “YMCA,” Monica develops a crush on a suave, sultry bus boy-cum-aspiring poet who, we soon learn, finds American women as empty as flowerless vases. He bemoans the poor translation of the cryptic, comely French scribe Baudelaire, something to which we can all relate. (I wonder if the bus boy picked up the later translation put out by New Directions.)

Friends is a libidinous show, with sex always on someone’s mind. Ross benefits from a sex for dummies book given to him in jest, and Carol and Susan have, as Ross observes, a lot of books “about being a lesbian.” (Get them a copy of Nightwood!) Danielle Steel, who as of May 2024 is the best-selling writer of all-time thanks to her 140 novels all structured from the same reliably rivals template, gets a mention, and Joey finds Rachel’s erotic novel when he naps in her bed (the duck threw up on the couch). But the writer of romance megahits that fans surely remember is Chandler’s mom, Nora Bing.

Licentious author of licentious books, Mrs. Bing is massively successful, and by no means a throwaway gag. She is a character who is fairly fleshed-out for such limited time on screen, thanks to the stories we already know about her, as well as efficient television storytelling; but, most importantly, she tells us a lot about Chandler, who has his own epiphany and an early example of the funny man-boy’s growth when he confronts his mom after she kisses Ross, the latest of what he considers a lifelong deluge of un-mom-like behavior. Chandler would go on to be the character to mature the most, and this is where it begins. A William Gass quote comes to mind: “It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word.”

Joey, despite being the least literate of the gang (recall him later using a thesaurus for every word of his adoption agency letter, or when Ross calls the coterie “well-educated adults… and Joey”), is the subject of many of the book jokes. Literature, after all, is about earnestness, about the unfettered unspooling of the heart. In one episode, he and Rachel make a deal: he will read Little Women (“How little are these women?” he asks) if she will read The Shining. Joey is so scared of the book, he traps it in his freezer, an icy prison for the only book he loves… until Little Women. (And when Rachel ruins a pivotal and shocking moment of Little Women, Joey becomes more distraught than if you were to eat the last slice of pizza on him. A quote Joey might take to heart: “Don’t try to make me grow up before my time…”)

Chandler’s name is repeatedly mocked throughout the show, and when Joey demands that he name one famous Chandler, the quipster retorts, “Raymond Chandler,” purveyor of Los Angeles’s sordid side, creator of the existential gumshoe, and Joey tells him not to make up people. Joey’s child-like naivety inspires some literary ribbing throughout the series. Chandler compares him to both Lennie in Of Mice and Men and Charlie in Flowers for Algernon. (Such jokes would likely not be well-received today, if the references were understood, that is, but fans of the show are generally tolerant of any antiquated bits.)

Joey does, however, surprise us with an unexpected 1984 reference, and one wonders when he read Orwell’s required assignment, as we know he never read in high school, choosing sex instead. (He also tells us on two different occasions that he only reads cereal boxes and comic books.) And, of course, there’s Chandler buying a rare old copy of The Velveteen Rabbit for Joey’s girlfriend, a gift whose deep meaning is lost on Joey. (He thinks it’s about cheese.) But Chandler accidentally lets slip his own obliviousness, too, when he is asked what his favorite Hemingway book is, and says, after a momentary pause for futile rumination, The Firm.

The Velveteen Rabbit isn’t the only children’s book that gets airtime; after all, when you grow up and kids enter your life, so do kids’ books. The perpetually horny and hungry Joey forgets to get a present for Emma’s first birthday, so he does an impromptu dramatic reading of the ageless Love You Forever, which, we can surmise from everyone’s reaction, is a rare instance of Joey giving a good performance. (He later gives another one, twitchy with a full bladder, before peeing on Jeff Goldblum.) More kids books: Dr. Seuss gets a twofer, with Yertle the Turtle and Green Eggs and Ham each getting throwaway lines. Monica (who reads People magazine and watches Entertainment Tonight) gets enraged when Chandler likens a feminist self-help book to The Hobbit, and Ross and Chandler reminisce about the halcyon days with their riotously fun friend they nicknamed Gandalf because, as Ross has to explain to Joey, he is the party wizard.

And the gang do some writing of their own, too. Ross wrote a book which was, as of season seven, only ever checked out by one person, a hottie he ends up rolling around with on the library floor. He is the only person “with any respect for the sanctity of the written word.” (And yet, in season nine, he tells us that most of his work has been widely discredited.) When Chandler is giving examples of quotidian lies, he mentions telling Ross that he will read this book, and presumably never does.

Phoebe, who doesn’t believe in evolution or gravity, who has no education but offers astute insight into 19th century literature, also pens her own stories—14, actually. Her latest: the dos and don’ts of relationships, based on Chandler and Monica, to their chagrin. Phoebe’s books have been well-received by everyone who has read them—which is only her. She also once went on a date with a published writer… of children’s erotica. “They’re wildly unpopular,” he says, devoid of shame. We can assume that her books are probably better. After all, we know that she is a decent reader, so it isn’t totally absurd to trust her taste.

Meanwhile, Chandler pretends he is working on a short story when Rachel walks in as he and Ross are making the infamous list of the pros and cons of Rachel herself. Forced to make one up as he goes, he is berated by Ross, who barks that he’s “the worst writer in the world.” Chandler is more successful in an alternate reality when Archie comics accept one of his stories. This is quintessential Chandler, the only one of the crew who hates his job, able to fulfill his dream only in a fantasy. In the end, there is one sentence from Herman Melville that keeps coming back to me when I think about Chandler: “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”