The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [23]
Our talk consisted solely of the word “No.” . . . Proust asked me if I knew the duc de so-and-so. I said, “No.” Our hostess asked Proust if he had read such and such a piece of Ulysses. Proust said, “No.”
Conversation hinges on reciprocity. You may sing like a nightingale on the dullest of subjects, but eloquence is no use, no matter that you’re Joan of Arc or Joan Rivers, if nobody can answer you. If you speak, and I don’t, a contract is broken. However, it isn’t necessary to match word for word, revelation for revelation; the trade is emotional, not informational. What matters is to hear the invitation in what someone says: to speak, or to listen.
TYPOLOGY OF BORES, CHORES, AND OTHER CONVERSATIONAL BEASTS
DEMOLITION BALL Pendulor blockheadibus
Demolition Ball will let you get a word in edgeways. But don’t mistake these interludes for him listening. In the lags between tirades, you can almost hear the groan of mental machinery as he swings back, preparing for the next attack.
Whatever you say, however you say it, DB will find something objectionable. Whether or not it is what you actually said. Why let facts stand in the way of a good argument?
His enthusiasms are little easier to take than his hates. Positive, negative—every opinion is delivered with such ferocity that people appear always to agree. It’s easier.
The unfortunate by-product of rolling over to DB is that it appears to confirm he is right in all he says. This is particularly harmful since DB’s operatic ego is in fact host to a tragic character, an aged toddler, still reeling at the discovery that he is not, as Ma and Pa suggested, the font of the world’s hopes, dreams, or wisdom. So the older he gets, the higher disappointment mounts, and DB punches out with ever greater force.
Tactics: Facing a monster, it’s tempting to play dead. Instead, do as Perseus did to the gorgon Medusa: Hold up a mirror to turn him to stone. It is because DB can’t master his emotions that he messes with other people’s. So step back, calmly identify contradictions in his arguments, and watch him writhe.
Can’t be bothered? Then treat him like a tot: Laugh or hug the helpless critter.
Pluses: In a Whatever world, DB’s conviction that some things need saying, sense and sensitivity be damned, is rare. Consider him a whetstone to sharpen your wits.
3
PAY HEED On the Acrobatics of Attention
When Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller, obtuse observers were confounded: What could an intellectual possibly have to say to a helium-headed bombshell?
But if Laurence Olivier is to be trusted, Monroe, not Miller, got the fuzzy end of the lollipop. He wrote to Noël Coward from the set of The Prince and the Showgirl:
The blond bottom looks and appears to be very good indeed. . . . Arthur talks a great deal better than he listens, but I never found his talk very entertaining.
Of all deterrents to conversation, most off-putting is the notion that great conversationalists are great talkers. Luckily, it’s wrong. Conversation is two-way, three-way; as many ways as there are people. And however entertaining a night with Oscar Wilde might have been, compared to Arthur Miller, it would have been as spectacle, preferably at a distance, or you’d have risked supplying the warp for his wit.
Talk has hogged the limelight in part because listening lacks glamour. Politeness ordains it a duty, which has been mistaken for a measure of conversational power, with listeners the weaker vessel, to be filled by speakers’ potent spirit. So thought society Rottweiler la duchesse du Maine, daughter-in-law to Louis XIV:
I adore life in society: everyone listens to me, and I listen to no one.
Unsurprisingly, her fashionable reign was brief.
➺ Rule one: Great conversationalists listen more than talk
Surely the main reason listening is overlooked is that its masters deflect attention