Republican Party Reptile(43)

If, for instance, the talk is about political oppression in Eastern Europe, tell how Czech dissidents have a joke about a shopper who stands in line at a butcher store for fifteen hours only to be told there is no meat. When he complains loudly, a trench-coated stranger steps out of the crowd. “Comrade,” whispers the stranger, “control yourself. In the old days if a person complained like that, well . . .” The stranger makes a pistol gesture with his fingers.

The shopper returns home. When his wife sees he’s emptyhanded, she asks, “What’s the matter, are they out of meat?”

“Worse than that,” replies the shopper. “They’re out of bullets.”

This joke was told in political cabaret skits in Prague before the 1968 Russian invasion. By saying so you remove the onus of telling a joke directly. Otherwise you’re attempting conversational bondage and discipline.

More obnoxious than a joke is a heated debate. Not only is it aggressive, but it violates the spirit of conversation as an art form. A conversation is not expected to “decide something” any more than a painting by Matisse is.

And most repulsive of all faults in parlance is advice. It shows every kind of disrespect for the knowledge and judgment of others and combines that with an exhibit of gross lack of common sense in the purveyor. What’s never taken should be never offered.

If the attitudes are right then there is no such thing as a wrong subject. Even grandchildren can be discussed if you have adequate detachment to sketch them as the little beasts they are. But, generally, the subjects of conversation fall into three categories: ideas, information, and gossip.

Ideas may be distinguished from their duller cousins, opinions, in that ideas are living things which may be pruned, grafted onto, or forced to blossom as they pass around the table, whereas opinions are dead sticks most often used in thrashing equally dead equines. “Meryl Streep is able to portray a sexuality that goes beyond the confines of prurience.” That’s an idea. “Meryl Streep is real good.” That’s an opinion. Stick to ideas. They’re, well, less opinionated-sounding.

Information is something everyone desires and no one has the patience to endure receiving. Who has not suffered an explanation of how pork-belly futures work? But any information can be fascinating if properly conveyed. There is a biochemist in New York who is able to explain cell meiosis in terms of high school romance: how DNA breaks apart the same way a teenager hates to spend time with her family and how that teenage bundle of chromosomes meets up with some cute DNA that moved in next door on a sperm. Then the two of them hook up and start the whole biological ranch house with one and a half baths and a carport all over again. The key is in keeping your terms and concepts general. Avoid jargon. Few computer experts would care to be addressed in Swahili, yet the same experts confound their listeners with bytes, floppy disks, and core dumps.

Gossip is everyone’s favorite subject. Of course, gossip is terrible. But so are all of us. No one is going to stop gossiping, so you might as well do it right. Never gossip about people you don’t know. This is stealing bread from the mouths of simple artisans such as Suzy or Rona Barrett. Also, it gives others the impression that the people you do know are a pretty dull lot. Announce your gossip with a straight face. Sophistication does not admit to surprise, and knowledge of human nature should preclude disappointment. And present all scandals in a forthright and unexaggerated form. Some degree of honesty must be present in conversation or it lapses into a lower form of art such as literature.

Good conversation may be thought assured by lively people, smart attitudes, and topics sufficiently worthwhile or sufficiently otherwise. But anything can be spoiled by technique.

There must be a rhythm of exchange among the guests. Everyone must make a contribution even if that contribution is only a pretended inability to swallow a mouthful of soup because of the stunning nature of what’s been said. No one should ever be excluded. Nothing is more disgusting than five people talking intimately about something a sixth person has never heard of. You might as well invite that person to dinner and not serve him food. There should be no extended duets unless only two people are present. You should have no honeymoon couples (marital, commercial, or other) at your table. And there should be no seductions evident. Flirtations may be rampant, but they should be public and tend to the amusement, or astonishment anyway, of the whole company.

Ideally one guest should have a say; there should be general response; the first guest should make rebuttal or retraction; and the floor should pass to someone else. When it does so, the subject should also change at least slightly. Francis Bacon, in his seventeenth-century essay “Of Discourse,” said, “The honourablest part of talk is to give the occasion; and again to moderate and pass to somewhat else; for then a man leads the dance.”