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Improving Our Talking Life - part 5
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When anybody's method and manner clearly violated the recommendations set down in the subsequent chapters, it was easy to see why they were dull or irritating. But among people not obviously deficient, I could never conclusively put my finger on the precise factor that makes some people interesting to talk with and others not. I followed up every conceivable hypothesis. Now, if I have to commit myself, I say one finds a stranger uninspiring, even though well mannered, if he is narrow in his interests, if he has no enthusiastic interest in anything, and if he brings no new slant or special data on the topic or topics discussed. Conversely, one finds a stranger interesting, one is stimulated by him to continue the talk and the acquaintance, if he has a wide range of interests, if he has some particular enthusiasms, and if he seems to get underneath the surface of anything discussed. The latter is precisely the hardest to analyze. It seems to be the real secret. It is a sort of better grip on a subject than most have, a tendency to see it from more angles. It is most certainly the tendency to rise from the particular into the universal, to relate an instance to a law, a fact to a truth. A dull person will describe his aging father's ailments; an interesting one will go from his father's ailments to the problems of old people in general. That tendency seems to me the most definite single factor between tiresome talkers and stimulating ones.
Generally it is the people with the higher native intelligence, in the army those with the highest army classification scores, who have the keener and wider interests and the richer grip on their subjects. The level of intelligence tends to produce a corresponding level of grasp and variety for all topics of conversation. It is probably true that no satisfactory conversational rapport or affinity is possible between people of widely separated intelligence levels. Genius and moron would seem never to be conversationally compatible. A two horsepower mind can probably never develop sufficient range and depth to stimulate a six horsepower one. Friendship between people so divergent in talents is never likely to be conversationally stimulating enough to survive a common and specialized interest. But our Lord spoke of a talent range of one to five. Hence, even if groupings or friendships between extremes are avoidable, groupings of people in adjacent talent ranges cannot well be and ought not to be avoided. In such, while there is certainly a divergence of talent, it is not so great that the right training in conversational method and manner, the proper cultivation of interests, cannot bridge the difference for a happy talking life. Aside from sex, what seems to draw people together more than anything else is their manner and range of conversation. And much which even in marriage passes for incompatibility is really nothing but conversational disparity, often a correctable disparity. Conversational compatibility is conditioned not merely by native intelligence but by many other things. It is a reflection of one's training, character, interests, experiences — all of which can be changed and improved, so that what once seemed to many a dull personality can come to seem an interesting one to virtually everybody. Everyone has heard it said of someone, "My, how he's improved. In high school he used to be such a drip. Now he is one of the sparks of the party." Whatever the change, it is certain that it is his manner of talking that is making it evident.
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