"A Good Talk" by Daniel Menaker

I'm not sure exactly why, but I find myself immersed in fewer and fewer conversations these days. I don’t mean the routine sorts of chats one has with workers, colleagues, or spouses, but rather the indulgent exchanges with perfect strangers that I once relished so much, filled with ideas, opinion, and argument, the sort of social encounter that can last ten minutes or an hour and a half, depending on the elegance of the give-and-take and how well the participants wish to know each other. You know, a conversation. Once, I had the most delightful and illuminating conversations--on airplanes and trains, in bars, at dinner parties. It’s possible that I just travel less, go out less, and get invited to fewer dinners. But I suspect there are other factors at play.

 

I suspect that many of us converse a bit less than we used to. Blame the Internet, I suppose, the emails, text messages, web chats, social media, instant messages--all those shorthand substitutes for face-to-face human interaction. (An earlier generation might have blamed radio and television, but I’m a product of lots of radio and television, and I’ll never say an unkind word about them; besides, they’re endangered species.) Daniel Menaker--legendary editor of The New Yorker and Random House fame--would argue, as he does so charmingly in A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation , that when we do not converse, we lose out on one of life’s greatest and most essential pleasures.

 

As Menaker explains, “communicating with one another for no immediate reason has to be the most quintessentially and exclusively human of all our behaviors.” But more than that, conversation is “a human art of great importance produced by all people everywhere.” The key word here is “art.” Great conversations allow us to tell stories about ourselves, to shape the narratives of our lives. They communicate something innate, Menaker writes, the way paintings do: “Some are simple and basic, like a child’s finger painting. Some have more texture, like a proficient still life. And many are rich and complex, like a Vermeer.” Conversations are also, I think, like music. Structurally, they are made up of introduction, exposition, development, and coda, and each has its own distinct rhythms, cadences, and tonal qualities. One participant may dominate for a spell, then recede while the other takes over. Think of a duet, but with elements of aria and recitative thrown in as well.

 

The best conversations are both improvised (to continue the music metaphor) and governed by rules; indeed, they can be as elaborately scripted as a courtly dance. As Menaker points out, they follow a more-or-less standard structure: two people begin by finding common ground, then move on to a risk-taking stage that may involve confession, once a sense of trust has been established. Of course, this process can lead to missteps and misunderstandings, or a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease--as I’ve learned all too often.

 

I remember a flight I was on about fifteen years ago, coming home from college, when I started talking to the woman next to me. She was en route to Africa, and our talk turned at once to African history. The conversation was going well, and we talked for a good hour, at which time I rather confidently expressed the opinion (blustery undergraduate that I was) that the missionaries had done more damage to sub-Saharan African society than the most brutal colonial powers. The woman’s smile disappeared, and she ended the conversation soon after. Turns out, she was in fact a missionary. Heading to sub-Saharan Africa. Conversation--over.

 

And yet, if you can avoid stepping in it, conversation, when characterized by curiosity, humor, and yes, even impudence, can have many “noble benefits,” Menaker writes, “that transcend the merely pragmatic.” Humans have always known this. A certain group of Englishmen believed in it deeply; imagine Dryden, Swift, and Dr. Johnson holding court in the coffeehouse. The French are particularly good at this particularly aimless activity, too.

 

And yet, in America the perceived wastefulness of idle chat has been viewed in some quarters as, well, somewhat un-American. “Thoreau deliberately turned his back on society and deplored conversations about ‘the news,’” Menaker writes. “Hemingway’s fiction often frowns on garrulity, and huge close-ups of John Wayne to Clint Eastwood to Bruce Willis to, in her way, Jodie Foster--all of them generally Strong and Silent, or at least Tough and Terse--have filled our movie screens for decades.” In other words, “a persistent legacy of Puritan sobriety and pioneer pragmatism” has tended to win the day.

 

But a good talk can bring about a neuro-chemical high, Menaker writes, with physiological and psychological benefits. He has me utterly convinced--for one thing, he delivers his argument with such style. The asides and anecdotes in A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation --the most conversational aspects of this book--are full of humor and wit. Even the name-dropping is done with a good bit of self-deprecation, and Menaker sure can drop a name (this is a man, after all, who has dealt with some of the brightest luminaries in literature).

 

Ultimately, we talk intimately with others to know ourselves, Menaker writes: “In finding out who the person we’re talking to is--what his or her complaints and complexities are, his or her tastes and toxins, his or her angels and demons--we find out who we are, especially if he or she returns the courtesy of attention and has the curiosity and humor, and impudence, to draw us out.”

 

Conversation, then, is indeed like great art, for like artists, we engage in talk to probe the mysteries of life, what we individually or collectively do not understand but hope desperately to make sense of. In telling our life stories to those we meet, in propagating the narrative of our lives one conversation at a time, are we not hoping to be remembered? Are we not, like any artist, seeking immortality?