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Improving Our Talking Life - part 4

I was prompted to write my thoughts upon this subject by mere indignation, to reflect that so useful and innocent a pleasure, so fitted for every period and condition of life, and so much in all men's power, should be so much neglected and abused. I reflected much upon their attitude. By and by, however, I began to feel that these critics of conversation expected too much from the human race. As I got into the latter years of college and into graduate school, I found conversation an increasingly more satisfying pleasure. Nearly all of my school­mates seemed to be people with whom one could, singly or collectively, have good talk. I began to suspect that what was irking the writers was that ordinary people talked about ordinary things, whereas these pen wielders probably thirsted for nothing but conversazione about sonnets, land­scapes, and arias. I reflected that normal people cannot be expected to talk about these things, that their talk is prob­ably all right and lively enough for their own tastes, that writers, teachers, and clergymen simply should accept the fact that the people of "Our Town" will confine their talk to measles, groceries, matrimony, and children, and that the intellectuals should therefore either go back to their books, lectures, and sermons, or hobnob exclusively with one another.

Being a college teacher myself, I tended in my talking life to act accordingly. However, two observations slowly forced themselves upon me. One was that some of the greatest bores in the world can be found among the "intellectuals," so that evidently it was not brains and learning alone that made the conversationalist. The other was that the conversa­tion of the "intellectuals," even when lively, seems to be far more about groceries and matrimony than about lyrics and existentialism. While, it is true, the conversations that were most memorable for me personally were those mostly about cultural and intellectual topics, the post-mortem of the nor­mally interesting conversations of cultured or educated per­sons tended to show that they were some 90 per cent about the average interests of normal people, and only 10 per cent about so-called cultural topics.

Nevertheless, whatever topics certain people talked about, it made for lively and interesting conversation. This led me to conclude that it is not so much the topic that makes for good talk — or the education of the speaker — but the han­dling of the topic. It was the manner of talking about it — possibly, as Johnson put it, the knack of placing "things in such views as they are not commonly seen in," that resulted in an "edge of liveliness." This impression was strongly con­firmed by a stretch in army barracks. The talk of most sol­diers most of the time was, of course, too indecent for com­ment or participation. But not all. There were enough conver­sationally decent fellows there of all degrees of education and talents to permit several observations. One was that bores were not confined to any profession or trade or nationality. Secondly, fellows with an "edge of liveliness" in their talk might be white or black, Catholic or Hindoo, plumbers or professors. Again, one felt that it was not so much the topics discussed as the manner and method that made the conver­sation either interesting or boring.

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