The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [73]
The better you know someone, the greater the praise: A compliment swells according to intimacy. Equally, not to offer one to a friend you haven’t seen lately might be construed a tacit suggestion that she’s changed, but not for the better. I enjoyed an encounter with my husband’s employer, who gallantly roared I looked no different from a decade ago. Then spoiled it: “Which plastic surgeon?”
HOW TO BE FLATTERED
Compliments present an etiquette puzzle.
Until we hit puberty, it’s good manners to say “Thank you” to a compliment. But after that, at least in Britain, the protocols of politeness demand we say something more elaborate: Simply accepting seems somehow smug. This makes flattery peculiarly helpful to conversation, especially early on, because the requirement not to count our laurels compels us to use ingenuity and find something else to talk about.
We obey what I call the Law of Compliments Disavowal:
Acknowledge the compliment: never simply accept it.
Ideally, this means turning the compliment into an opportunity to be modest and then give a compliment back. To “That is a lovely dress” you might say “Oh, I got it in the sales. But yours is gorgeous.” A competitive element can creep into self-deprecation (“Think this dress is supposed to resemble an overstuffed sausage?” “No, it’s lovely. But I look like the Bride of Wildenstein’s offcuts”). Nevertheless, at bottom it’s all about showing solidarity and building a comfort zone. Even if you and your friend end up squabbling about who has the gravelliest skin.
Envy is flattery’s handmaiden, so the more truthful a compliment, the wiser you are to acknowledge but not assume it. Gracious composer Franz Schubert thanked Graz Music Society for making him an honorary member, saying he hoped “of being one day really worthy of this distinction.” And talk show host Tyra Banks was art-fuller still to dismiss “quickly but with a smile” a journalist’s suggestion she was “the new Oprah Winfrey, her heroine.” Such a response seems only to confirm the merit of her ambition.
Just as no sensible celebrity complains of his isolation, no sage beauty says, “You’re right, I am.” Professional good-looker Liz Hurley dutifully flicked off an interviewer’s suggestion of her gorgeous-ness by drawing attention to her “ugly” hands. Celluloid-melter Michelle Pfeiffer claimed to another that she looked like a duck. Pure genius, that. Immediately you superimpose a wee duckling over that lovely face, and at once think, gosh, far from unattainable ice maiden, Michelle is cute.
WITH RESERVATIONS . . .
Then again, were Tyra to congratulate Michelle on her unwithered charms, the only polite answer would be “Thank you”; anything else and Tyra might think she was fishing, or weird. In part, because Tyra herself is an infernal radiance, and honesty between equals is more permissible, with no power imbalance to offset. But there is also a cultural difference. Pride in merits remains a keynote in America’s meritocratic dream; apart from at high school, there’s little terror of tall poppies or being one, and no class war-stained angst about looking down, or up. So stateside, don’t match compliment for compliment unless you mean it. As for knocking one back—forsooth, for shame, fuhgeddaboutit.
And tread carefully in Germany, where some take no-nonsense compliments a step further, delivering backhanders with a spin worthy of Boris Becker. A Berlin theater designer found the concept of writing a diary column for a newspaper hard to grasp. Finally we translated.
“Klatsch?”—“Gossip?” (rhymes with Quatsch, German for “trash.”)
She stared, as if to verify that this being before her was human.
“But you are a serious person!”
TYPOLOGY OF BORES, CHORES, AND OTHER CONVERSATIONAL BEASTS
CREEP Ickydemus
Creep arouses similar feelings to a slug: Either you want to stamp on him, or run. But it doesn’t end there. These uncharitable sentiments create a