Mr. X: “Smithereens is an artfully unattractive movie with a protagonist who’s purposely unsympathetic, and it has no scenes showing development of personal relationships because our imaginations are intended to fill in not what happened but what did not.”
Miss Y: “Things which require more than three negatives to praise never make money.”
The wit of the Algonquin round table had more to do with such drill than with the native genius of its habitués.
If you can’t invite the same group repeatedly or if you don’t know any such group to invite, then try to gather people who have something in common. But make sure what they have in common is not a point of vanity. Only an idiot would have two sports impresarios, two opera tenors, or two Supreme Court justices at the table.
Also make sure your guests don’t want to kill each other—a warning that should be unnecessary. But many hosts think it “interesting” to invite to the same fête, say, the head of a PLO faction and the prime minister of Israel or Norman Mailer and all his ex-wives. This is all right for cocktail parties, but at a small seated dinner it’s liable to result in stony silences or tossed gravy boats.
And do not invite people who have only one interest in their lives even if everyone else at the meal is similarly obsessed. Extended conversations on one topic quickly degenerate from ideas to opinions and from opinions to bigotries. Six fervent devotees of French Symbolist poetry will be fine through soup, but by cheese and fruit they will be yelling at each other.
“Verlaine’s clustered images suggesting mood and emotion stink like pigs!”
“Do not!”
And so on.
The one thing which has to be mutual among guests is not acquaintance, interests, or background but attitude. Good conversation takes place on a plane above mortal affairs. There must be sufficient detachment to banish the stupider emotions. The purpose of conversation—if something that’s so much an art can be said to have a purpose—is to learn how others see things, how others make sense of existence or make peace with its nonsensicality. Good conversation gives you the advantage of being Argus-eyed or Hydra-headed (though, it is to be hoped, with nicer heads).
Conversation is therefore no place to talk about yourself. Your guests can observe you perfectly well and don’t need help. What they want to hear is something they don’t know or haven’t thought of. Conversation is especially no place for the small and boring extensions of the self. Do not talk about your pets or infant grandchildren. By the same token, avoid being too personal with others. Some will think your inquiries rude, but, worse, the rest will jump to answer them. The disease of narcissism is not cured by spreading it around the table.
Neither has conversation room for awe or envy. Someone may be admired or praised, but an awestruck recitation of the powers and virtues of Fritz Mondale, for example, would put a damper on the evening. And a sudden outburst of jealous indignation that you aren’t he would bring talk to a shocked halt.
Bitterness and complaint also lower the tone of conversation, and violate a rule of general decorum besides: “A gentleman never complains about anything he is unable or unwilling to remedy.” Unless you’re going to dash from the table and balance Social Security’s income and outlay with a personal check, you should have another glass of wine and let the talk pass to outrageous defense expenditures.
The taboo against querulousness, however, should not be taken as a prohibition of damning things. Damning is a perfectly Olympian thing to do and has been a source of delight to great minds throughout history. You can damn the government up and down, call its every minion illegitimate progeny of slime mold, and say that a visit to Washington is like taking a bath in a tub full of live squid, so long as you don’t complain.
An attitude of egalitarianism is necessary, as well as an attitude of detachment. There is an unwritten law of dinner table democracy. No matter how famous and powerful some guests or how humble and obscure others, they’re all equal when they sit down to eat. Thus there should be no overt aggression or competitiveness. Evangelizing, pontification, and the telling of jokes are all wrong. An attempt to convert and an assumption of omniscience are both competitive acts. And a joke is a rhetorical device that renders the teller dominant and the listener submissive. If a joke is so appropriate to the conversation that you have to tell it, turn the joke into an anecdote.
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 anythi
ng 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.”
Changes of tone and style should be as frequent as changes of speaker and subject. Anecdote should not pile on anecdote but be mixed with observation, quip, hypothesis, question, etc. This is not just for the sake of variety. In conversation, unlike bridge, it’s bad taste to follow suit. If Miss A mentions that she knows an actress with 240 pairs of shoes, only a beast would let on that he’s met a countess who owns three hundred. It is your duty as host to mitigate such trespasses. You have to say something to the effect of “Yes, the countess does own three hundred pairs of shoes. But her father was so impoverished by European tax laws that he was forced to marry a wealthy insect, and therefore the lady in question has six feet.”
It is, in fact, your duty to see to the smooth running of all conversational machinery. In a perfect situation, this means nothing but keeping the glasses full. But usually you also need to curtail monopolization by the skilled, solicit participation from the dull, and excuse that participation to the spirited. You must dress nettled pride with compliments, perform oral surgery to remove people’s feet from their mouths, and, if argument gets completely out of hand, pretend the maid just had a baby in the kitchen.
Remember that trick. You’re also the person who will eventually have to make everyone shut up and go home.
An Alphabet for Schoolboys
Consisting of simple verses replete with sound advice on manners and learning and admonishments both moral and otherwise
A is for Algebra, thoroughgoing bore. To pass it is asked you, no less and no more. For though algebra’s dreary, complex, and abstruse, Thank God, out of school, it’s of no further use.
B is for Beer. It makes you act lewd And stupid and loud. It’s a ruinous fluid For people with taste, for people who think. Beer is not nice. It’s a bad thing to drink. The consumption of beer is low-class and risky. Stick to gin, vodka, cocaine, and whiskey.
C is the mark you should always have made. It’s a simple and forthright and manly-type grade. For an “A” gives your peer group sad indication Of a social life lacking inspiration, While “B” is overreaching for most humankind, Yet displays lassitude in the genius mind, And “D” is the sign of a mental defective, And “F” invites violent parental invective. “C” is the best. It shows moderation, The goal of philosophers in each age and nation.
D is for Drugs, that’s to say, marijuana. A most common flora with your age of fauna. This herb is mind-widening; it improves your
perspective,
And makes you intuitive, kind, and perceptive. It heightens your senses, sets your psyche free, Causes you to care for ecology, And imbues you with other qualities that Let people sneak up and crap in your hat.
E is for Effort. Never let it show. If you look like you’re trying, people will know That you have aspirations, that you are ambitious. They’ll consider you dangerous, pushy, malicious. Traditional society is not forgiving Of the upwardly mobile. They’re made to work for a
living.
F is for Failure, a horrible curse. Success is the only thing known that is worse. People like goof-offs, losers, and quitters. Towards champions and victors they feel little but bitter. Pretend you succeeded and say that you spurned it. But if you succeed, don’t let on that you earned it. There’s something for which folks have more hate
reserv’d
Than for chance success. It’s success
deserv’d.
G is for solid Geometry
Which mystifies you as it mystified me. So much so, in fact, I’m afraid I’m not deft Enough to go rhyme it. I’ll make another rhyme on F: F is for Fun—toot-toot! beep-beep! Have it all now. It doesn’t keep.
H is for Hard-ons, erections in your pants, During gym, in the lunch line, and at the Y dance. Don’t blush, don’t blow off your head with a Mauser Because of the rude bulging tent in your trousers. Just wait, relax, thirty years from this fall You’ll feel total elation to have one at all.
I stands for Integration, interethnical mix, Where busing gives society’s inequities the fix. Don’t slug your new schoolmate or whack his nappy
dome.
Don’t slap him or tease him or arson his home. Cheer him instead on field, in gym, at race, And win money bet on his oddly hued face.
J is for Jack-off, a.k.a. masturbation. Do it each school night and twice on vacation. It’s much less expensive than what you do with your
dick
When you’re grown up—as you will find all too quick.
K is for Kleenex suffused with your love. (Vid. poem for J directly above.)
L is for Latin, a language so peaked Even the Romans of yore do not speak it. If you don’t believe what I say, go see Reruns of I, Claudius from the BBC.
M is for “Most Popular,” also “Best Dressed,” “Best Dancer,” “Cutest Couple,” and all of the rest. The sleek cheerleader, the lead in the class play—She’ll wind up fat; he’ll turn out gay. The boy who’s presently a football star, In a dozen years will sell used cars. The girl who’s now the Homecoming Queen, She’ll end her days divorced in Moline. Half of her court will be bottomless dancers. The class stud will die of testicular cancers. While the Student Council President Will be an Ashram resident. And for the sake of mercy there should be a UN
moratorium
On the kind of things that happen to the earnest
valedictorian.
Remember, the future visits every duress On the victims of adolescent success. Besides, so what if you aren’t a social lion? Neither was Zola nor Albert Einstein.
N is for Nike. It’s a missile not a shoe. Get yourself an oxford in cordovan, not blue.
O is for Offal, served in the cafeteria. Regard it as you would a vaccination for diphtheria. Lunchroom food is made in order to prepare you For the treatment you’ll receive from the girl who will
marry you,
And for military, business, and personal strife, And the rest of the shit you’ll eat later in life.
P is for Prom night, most important by far If you enjoy vomit and hand jobs in cars. It’s a night no sensible person would fail To forget, with exception of one small detail: The pictures your parents are sure to have took * Which they’ll frame and hang in the vestibule nook. This picture will publish in all the newspapers If you have a car wreck or become a child raper. So be sure your tuxedo is plain and fits right And looks as though owned and not hired that night, And be sure that your hair is properly plastered To your skull like a man’s, not a hippy disaster’s (Nor parted in the middle like a local sportscaster’s). This photo may get international play, Depending on what you do or you say. And you don’t want the world to think you a loon If you happen to die or shoot the President soon.
* There is absolutely no excusage For this past participle usage.
Q is for Questions of every kind, The sign of an unwell and feverish mind. Don’t succum
b to the ill of curiosities. The cure is worse always than the disease. He’s only more worried, he who knows. For your peace of mind let me propose The motto immemorial of the Bengal Lancers: “Don’t ask questions. You’ll only get answers.’
R is for Rah-rah, rah-rah, rah-rah, Boom-a-lacka, boom-a-lacka, sis, boom, bah. Control yourself, remain demure. School spirit is fearfully immature. Your high school fight song will strike a false note When you’re older and pretending you went off to
Choate.
S is for Scholastic Aptitude Test. Be sure to do better than all of the rest. That way you’ll get into Harvard or Yale, And land a job in the government if you pass or you
fail.
And government is a lucrative field With loads of influence and power to wield. Plus a government job insures that eventually, When you’re caught, you’ll serve time in the best
penitentiary.
T is for Tender kind charity. Work hard at getting rich if you ever want to see Any of it. Since charity is most felicitous When its object is rich to the point of conspicuousness.
U is for the Unemployment rates, Still rather grim in most cities and states. There may be no jobs no matter what your knowledge, By the time that you matriculate from college. So work and study and practice night and day At something to give you social entrée. There may be no jobs, not for doctor nor dentist, But you’ll marry an heiress if you’re real good at tennis.
V is for Verse, all adolescents write, Mawkish, self-pitying, derivative, trite. But at least, today, all verse is free, So verse is easier than it used to be. For poems once were written in doggerel thus: A-scramble for rhyme lest the scan make a muss. But nowadays, due to the work of a pack ’o Modernist bards and poetical wackos, There aren’t any rules. You can do what you want. You don’t have to, e.g., end this line with “daunt.” Just to your emotions give long-winded venting,
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