The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [37]
But hang on, aren’t some topics bad?
Yes: generally the ones we gossip about, then regret at our leisure. Like this seventeenth-century English lady, Lucy Hutchinson, repining her racy youth, before Civil War divided cavalier from puritan, and Charles I from his head:
I was not at that time convinced of the vanity of conversation which was not scandalously wicked . . . . I became the confidante in all the loves that were managed among my mother’s young women; and there was none of them but had many lovers, and some particular friends beloved above the rest.
Can’t you sense her yearning to say more about these “particular friends”? And doesn’t the fact that virtue starches her lips increase your desire to hear, three-plus centuries on?
➺ Rule five: Questionable subjects whet appetites
Scandal and conflict have ever been the spice to conversation. In the Bible’s first chat, Eve and Eden’s serpent discuss pilfering the tree of knowledge, and the earliest recorded literary dialogue, in the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh, is between a father and his hunter son, fretting about the hairy ecowarrior sabotaging their traps. The association remains fitting because although, as Aristotle suggested, accessible topics hail from the common ground, hot topics map fault lines and points of difference.
Paradoxical? Hardly. Without such border skirmishes, where would we be?
In a dull, silent world, free of opinion and all the troubles and triumphs it brings.
What we really want to talk about are pleasures, frivolous matters of taste (market researchers confirm this: Launching a pop group or a chocolate bar, they court neighborhood cool-makers, but not for conversationally unfriendly products like life insurance). And perils, as well as those piquant phenomena that don’t quite square with our notions of how life should be. In other words, when it comes to good and bad topics, puritan and cavalier attitudes continue their squabble, speaking in us with forked tongue, as we shiver at a murder, deplore a film star’s cellulite, and get our juices flowing.
Hot topics’ appeal isn’t entirely prurient. We huddle around them like a fire, trading titbits of information, taking intoxicating nips of Schadenfreude, to render the monsters out there a little less scary and reassure ourselves that we aren’t alone in our fears, or that worse could happen, indeed has: to somebody else.
The best topics—even the bad—make us feel better, one way or another.
THE CHOICE
So which subjects should be hoarded for sustaining conversation, and which froth up a light chat? In his Art of Pleasing in Conversation Cardinal Richelieu (the real one, not the Three Musketeers villain, although they’ve plenty in common) counseled:
Obscure Sciences and great Affairs must have a less share in their discourses than agreeableness and diversion.
But jolly humanist Erasmus ridiculed sententious attitudes in the tale of a banquet:
A guest sat by the fire. Another said, “I want to tell you something.”
“Is it serious?”
The man frowned. “Not merry.”
“Then save it,” said the guest. “Serious things after the feast.”
He was not happy when he saw his burned cloak.
There is no formula. Instead, read the mood, and bear in mind that edgy subjects, though risky, tend to trail conga lines of meaty potential topics. And whatever you pick, it will say something about you. . . .
THE MENU
BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AFFAIRS, DIVORCES, DEATHS?
A category better known as local news. Learning what has befallen family, friend, or foe is great. Provided it is your family, friend, or foe. Like many wines, local news may bring transports of delight in its native land, but it doesn’t necessarily travel.
Still, gossip is conversation’s bread and butter (two-thirds concerns our local world). The word originates from Old English godsybb—“spiritual kin” such as godparents—and it still serves as social glue, reinforcing ties of kith