The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [41]
With fellow enthusiasts, go for it. Even with the uninitiated, a light top note of tidbits and trivia make conversation sing. Aside from radar for identifying common ground, discussing extracurricular interests has the advantage that enthusiasm spawns enthusiasm.
Poet Leigh Hunt, who cheered on Shelley’s teasing of Benjamin Robert Haydon, seemed to have forgotten his meaner streak when he advised:
Topics fittest for table are cheerful, to help digestion; and cordial, to keep people in heart . . . reminiscences, literary chat, questions as easy to crack as the nuts, quotations flowing as the wine, thoughts of eyes and cheeks blooming as the fruit.
The Romantic era may be over, but even acid-tongued comic Ricky Gervais admits: “Nothing makes a connection with me like a piece of art, a song or a painting.... I’d rather gush about something that changed the world than be embarrassed.”
Try to imbibe a bit of culture; if only to distract yourself from routine matters. Should you be too busy for firsthand research into the latest must-read/-see/-listen, take heart from Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read:
Among specialists [literary critics] mendacity is the rule, and we tend to lie in proportion to the significance of the book under consideration. . . . The books we talk about are only glancingly related to real books.
The oddest interest can ignite a conversation. Whatever grabs you. In moderation.
Risk: Riding hobby horse into ground
Opportunity: Information; warmth; passion
Scenario: Anywhere. Up to a point.
IMMEDIATE SURROUNDINGS?
What is going on? What prompted the smile that just scudded across your companion’s face? Why did that woman wear that dress? All such minor mysteries may be enlisted for your battle against silence.
The joy of topics triggered by your environment is that because they occupy common ground, they limbo dance under the usual etiquettes and you may raise them, interrupting a given line of discussion, without offense. So if bored, keep eyes and ears skinned and you can bounce talk elsewhere. Be imaginative (“Nice flowers” is not juicy). And cautious. Jibe at the man in the mauve catsuit and he will be her dad.
Risk: Is it worth talking about? Can you make it worth it? Is it safe?
Opportunity: Distraction; filling gaps
Scenario: Anytime; anyplace; anywhere
THE OTHER PERSON?
Smooth-talking Disraeli remarked,
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
But don’t enter your interlocutor’s private space without invitation. Wait to ask what he does, if he’s married, has kids, until he’s flagged these topics as safe. Take the side route, and stalk subjects that excite him.
Risk: Is it interesting? Is it safe?
Opportunity: Big returns for small investments of enthusiasm
Scenario: Need you ask?
WHAT NEXT?
And finally, the topic so overused that we’re hardly aware it is one: arrangements.
Many conversations round off in an exchange about the next occasion to meet/talk/do business. So if you want to say good-bye, but not forever, ask, “When can we do this again?” This sends a polite but unambiguous message that this conversation is already in the past.
Risk: Making false commitments
Opportunity: Getting on with your day
Scenario: When the end is nigh
Here ends my menu. Perhaps yours is longer. Whatever subject you choose, let it matter. G. K. Chesterton was right:
There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject; there are only uninterested people.
Neither an encyclopedic imagination nor a spontaneously combustible topic makes conversation whoopee if speakers don’t engage. It became clear to me that a job interview masquerading as lunch had turned belly-up when, without warning, my would-be employer began rabbiting about her cat (she hoped, by obscure methods, to “raise Sheba’s consciousness”).
What went wrong? Hard as we’d tried, I didn’t care about her interests, and the indifference was mutual. We had failed to tie our topics together.
TYPOLOGY OF BORES, CHORES,