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On Conversation

One of the smarter things Joseph Epstein ever said was this: "Small talk is underrated."

He was pointing out that it is, in fact, a cliche to say: "I hate small talk." This line is meant to be sort of earth-shattering; it's meant to convey that the speaker actually has access to deep and penetrating truths that set him apart from all of the rest of humankind. So burdened is the speaker by his own philosophical importance, he cannot be bothered to chat about the weather, or the new Lady Gaga movie. But how often does the speaker--having made this "anti-small-talk" revelation--then support his claim by making some profound statement? Has that ever happened, in your own experience?

-My own flailing awkwardness is sometimes successfully masked by a question I love, a question I ask more than just about any other question: "Have you seen any good movies lately?" This allows me to listen to a half-hour speech about recent movies, a subject that really interests me, and it's likely I'll observe something noteworthy about the character of the speaker, in that half-hour. I use this on my students. Perhaps I will be fired for having asked a small group of eighth graders if they plan to see the new remake of John Carpenter's "Halloween." But what else was I going to talk about? Baseball?

-My conversational hero is the man who runs GLAD. We were at a fancy dinner. There was a good deal of strutting and pretentiousness. And this man, who didn't have to talk to me at all, sliced through all of the silliness in approximately three seconds. He looked at me and said: "How awful this is for you. My husband would never agree to attend this. Tell me what kind of TV you like." This man will always have a gold star in my book.

-Richard Yates writes particularly well about bad conversation. In the memorable final scene of "A Special Providence," an aging alcoholic goes out with her friend for a drink. She loathes this self-important and utterly lost friend, who can speak only about her boss, and her unrequited love for her boss. "So his wife calls me and says, How dare you buy us tickets for THE MERRY MURDERS? I asked specifically for ON THE TOWN! And I thought, I mean, can you believe the gall of this woman? Can you believe that this is how I spend my time? And I said, I'm sorry, Mrs. Smith, but your husband specifically said, Buy any tickets you can find if you can't get ON THE TOWN....So I was simply following instructions! My poor boss! To be married to this monster!"

As this speech unspools, it shows off more and more little flecks of hyperbole, self-delusion, tediousness. We can imagine that the speaker knew the tickets she purchased would displease Mrs. Smith, and she can't quite admit her own passive-aggression, even to herself. (And so we have defensiveness. What a fine psychologist Yates was!) The protagonist stops listening and lets the noises just wash over her, and she begins to think about the bottle of gin she has at home. You'd imagine she would want to get away from her insufferable friend as fast as possible, but, in fact, she pleads for the friend to come up for gin at the end of the evening. (The moment of pleading results from a terror of being alone. Choose the devil you know over the devil you don't...Again: Yates! So bright!) And the friend, surely sensing that she hasn't been listened to, instead goes home.

An amateur writer of dialogue would simply have people exchange information. But Yates understands that there is the story, and the story under the story, and the story under the understory. An entirely different conversation happens with the body and the eyes: It's different from the words getting uttered. Anyway, the end of "A Special Providence" is devastating, and it seems to summarize everything I've ever observed about bad chatter, in my short life. It's also miraculous that a great writer would think to turn his brilliant attention to a subject as apparently banal as a dull midweek dinner between elderly frenemies. Sometimes, there's God so quickly.

-Teaching is like party planning. It's like going to one party after another, after another, after another. I really struggle with parties--I have intense social anxiety--and so it's striking to me that I would choose a day job that would require me to display "party behavior"--with a group of drunk little aliens, or third graders--day after day after day. I suppose I have not given up on the idea of social grace. Obtaining, mastering, social grace. DuBose Heyward once wrote: "It's not that I mind working. Working means travelers--journeying together--to the promised land." And that is what we all are, as we stumble through our fatuous bad-faith attempts at information-exchange. We are travelers, journeying together. The blind leading the blind. At least there is some humor in the journey.

*P.S. It's maybe a bit dangerous to write, in a cutting way, about your sloppy conversations. Because then maybe people will be less inclined to talk to you. Truman Capote had this problem after he published "Answered Prayers." But: c'est la vie. As Lorrie Moore has advised, somberly: "Never, never date a writer."

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