The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [31]
Although bent on increasing others’ happiness, the Apologist has much in common with her introvert sister, the Paranoid. That is to say, she is a mite selfish. In her relentless quest for perfection, she neither hears the pain her sonorous angst inflicts, nor senses that self-flagellation is inverted boasting, compelling others to give reassurances that, as a result, are never entirely sincere.
Tactics: If you care about the Apologist, don’t be drawn into her sadomasochistic reward system: Shut down the apology airspace to set her free. If she starts, laugh and change topic. Or say if you didn’t know better you’d think she was fishing for compliments.
If you don’t love her, the same tactics apply. Otherwise she’ll drive you nuts.
Pluses: Maddening, yes, but the Apologist proves how hard it is to be nasty to someone who beats you to it (a useful ploy to remember when you’re in trouble).
NOTE BENE
Sorry, But, the Celebrity Apologist: The public display of supplication has become an inevitable chapter in the narrative of any self-disrespecting twenty-first-century celebrity. A jolt of scandal, plus foaming bootlick to the people that a waning star has let down (all potential exercise-DVD/redemption-memoir purchasers), may offer a brief sequel in the public eye. But never confuse a good-hearted Apologist with this suppurating imposter, Sorry, But.
4
THE REST IS SILENCE On Not Speaking
Silence’s advocates tend to be discreet. But unusually self-effacing journalist James Hughes-Onslow spoke out after someone complained that, for all his juicy insider knowledge, having him to dinner was like “feeding a corpse.” He argued that this was polite:
Any intervention of a merely factual nature would probably bring the conversation to a complete halt.
Do you hold back? Despair of those who do? However lively your patter, however focused your charm, occasional air pockets in conversation are unavoidable. Whether they’re golden, or deadly, is debatable. But then, the same is true of talk.
When Egypt’s pharaoh sent Solon, founder of Athens’ democracy, an animal to sacrifice, he took the chance to test the Greek’s famed wits. Would Solon kindly select which part of the beast he judged best, which worst, and send both back? By return came a single item: the tongue.
If words may be misread, the trouble with silence is it’s nothing if not ambivalent. Since it requires discipline, it has long reflected power, and been affiliated with both good and evil. While the Roman goddess Isis vanquished “the lamentable silences of hell,” to Quakers and Buddhists freedom from the word brought higher consciousness. However, these days the negative view is in the ascendant.
The noisier life becomes, the more technology and social isolation gnaw at face-to-face talk, the less conversational silence seems to be valued. Residents of febrile urban environments dread it far more than those reared in gentler, rural settings—as if the absence of speech were as threatening as a Pinter pause.
To me, rising hostility is slightly paradoxical: If we don’t converse so much, you might think we’d feel easier with silence. But it also seems logical, as an extension of our declining prowess at reading conversational subtleties. Certainly, the bias is so entrenched that research finds hesitant speakers are routinely taken for doubtful characters: either mad, sad, shifty, or—a telling contradiction, this—powerful. Meanwhile powerless preschool tots are being diagnosed with “selective mutism” (fear of speaking in social situations), a condition formerly known as shyness, that is dosed with Prozac.
There’s bleak humor in busy parents contracting out responsibility for their offspring’s social graces, like this father, flourishing a check at an analyst:
“Ask any price you want. My son doesn’t talk. So do whatever you want as long as you make him talk, and then let’s not talk about it any more.”
But when did speech cease to be a freedom and become compulsary? Is silence an illness? And what parent