The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [17]
It’s tempting to stay in the revolving door, as I once saw the actor Robert De Niro do, coming and going at a dog-eared film awards extravaganza. But for pity’s sake, you’ve come this far. So think like a criminal: Roam around, case the joint, and find its weak points.
Best are fringe areas where groups break and re-form. Stand near food and drink and you’ve a ready-made topic, plus something to do. If this is a house party, offer to help serve. (Hold the honeypot: bees will swarm.) And if you see a new group forming, stand by with an attentive expression; they may invite you in.
Someone nice is waiting to meet you; he just doesn’t know it yet. He is the person not talking much who smiles, meets your eye. Or she is on her own, looking about hopefully like you, or he is studying the distant progress of a waitress, his glass as empty as yours. So join forces and catch her. Or you could hotwire talk with mild provocation, such as this shameless flattery I overheard: “Magnificent skirt. Are you a ballerina?” She pirouetted.
Once you’ve jimmied an opening, be ready to make small talk.
2
SMALL TALK, BIG DEAL On Striking Up a Tune
There was my target, deep in discussion with the museum curator. “One Hundred Years of Cinema” was being opened by one bona fide British star. Just one hundred rooms to chase him through, as I sought my chance to strike.
At least, it felt like one hundred, and I felt like an assassin. In fact this was my first assignment for a gossip column. All afternoon I had read brown press cuttings on the antics and tepid shames of Jeremy Irons. Twenty questions? I had two hundred.
Until I started stalking and fear took over. Story—what story?
“ACTOR VISITS MUSEUM SHOCK”?
Finally, boredom slew fear: How bad could it be?
I went up, said my name and place of work. Irons smiled. I gulped. My throat and mind congealed. He smiled some more. Then came the melt, starting in my nose, pores welling springs of treacherous sweat. At last he spoke.
“Good to meet you, Catherine Blyth of the Evening Standard. Have you met my wife?” He wafted a Hollywood-white hand. “Sinead, Catherine Blyth, Evening Standard.”
“Hello,” I said, and fled.
Impeccable manners can nuke unwelcome intruders. Who was I, this sleek repetition of my credentials seemed to beg, to invade the Irons ether?
But the problem was mine: I had nothing to say. Without an ice breaker, I froze, my body reacting as if his smile were saber-fanged.
If you don’t recognize the symptoms of social death, stop reading. You are a mathematician of genius, ruler of a minor principality, or possibly a sociopath. It may amaze you to learn that for many, even mild socializing is pathogenic. Such as the financial company directors, sent a questionnaire for a leadership course, which asked: “What in your work is most difficult?” As a chorus they replied: “Small talk with clients.”
THE ANATOMY OF SMALL TALK
Small talk has always had a bad name. The earliest reference in English, Lord Chesterfield’s of 1751, is to
a sort of chit-chat, or small-talk . . . the general run of conversation in most mixed companies.
Stunted conversation, in other words. Like women, small talk has been derided as trivial, empty, even frigid (a 1905 tale refers to “her colder, small-talk manner, which committed her to nothing”). As ever, prejudice masks insecurity and misunderstanding.
A character in Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Homecoming observes:
I am no good at small talk: I can never quite find the right tone to make the weighty sound trivial and the trivial sound weighty.
But small talk is neither a synonym for trite, nor about scaling topics to a set size. It can be many things: preamble to a meeting, networking, gossip, an exchange in the queue at the post office. At parties where guests are like bees bumbling flowers, it is a