For every expert interviewed on the evening news when stories break ranging from insurrection in Brunei to fresh oil discovered in Israel, there are five other experts the producers called, ten others they should have called instead, a hundred others they were capable of calling, a thousand others with some legitimate claim to being called—and many millions of others who are sure they’d have been better than the one who was called and wound up getting the thirty-five seconds of national attention.
That judge works hard. That judge is a success. That judge is capable of much more than small talk. That judge will probably never get a call from a network soliciting his opinion on a question of interpretation of Constitutional law.
It’s important that hungry people get food and thirsty people get drink. It’s just as important, in a loose, poetic kind of. way, that worthy people get attention. That’s why we have parties. That’s why we have fellowship. Your judge-proof cold front says, “Regardless of your needs or merits, I for one shall not grant your ego nourishment.”
It’s important that we put each other on each other’s “evening news.” Go ahead and ask them questions that will make them feel the cameras are focused, the microphones adjusted, and a meaningful audience—even if it’s only you— has raised the volume and disconnected the telephone to pay total attention to the thoughts and advice of an authority in the field.
You’ll find yourself asking follow-up questions, better ones than they ask on television. Maybe that’s because you’re more brilliant. Maybe it’s because you’ve got more than the TV reporter’s eighteen seconds to wrap the whole thing up. Never mind. You’ve advanced your cause at that party. You’ve made somebody talk. You’ve won. You’ve won by helping the judge win. And you helped him win by helping him talk
The more you work at imagining, the more people’s advice you can arrange to “need.” The old lady down the hall who speaks Slovenian may cause you to hide behind your packages when you see her to avoid the need to exchange greetings. She would instantly become the most important person in your life, however, if she happened to come ambling through the train station while you’re being arrested by the Yugoslav police in Maribor on false suspicion of cocaine possession. Rather than suffer another elevator silence the next time you see her, why don’t you light up your face and tell her you’ve been thinking about going to Yugoslavia, and maybe she could teach you how to say, “It’s nothing but talcum powder. Please take it and test it!” in Slovenian.
You’ll be richer by one lonely neighbor, one good chuckle, one sentence in Slovenian, and one covered dish of spiced chevapchichi the next time she cooks ethnic!
“I need your advice” is the signal to suspend all small talk until some much-needed knowledge is transfused from that person’s mind into yours.
“I need your advice” is a no-lose burst. “I’d like to know what you think.” “Your thoughts would be valuable.” “May I borrow your expertise for a minute?” “Maybe you can help me out with a problem?” “Hold it! I don’t know where to begin, but you could probably guide me all the way through.” Those are all different ways of saying, “You are a university. I am an applicant. I hope you’ll find room for me.” Notice how different people “jump’,’ when they learn, for instance, that the gentleman from Cincinnati is an accountant. “My brother-in-law is an accountant.”
What can he say to that except, “Oh, really?”
“A fraternity brother of mine used to work for an accounting firm in Cleveland. Do you know him?”
What can he say to that except “No”?
“Oh, accountant, eh? You must have a good eye for figures.”
What can he say to that except, “Heh, heh. You bet”— accompanied by the direst of determinations to pull a jailbreak to another room, or another party, or someplace where he won’t have a smoking Chernobyl like you close by!
Some people would say nothing in the face of the revelation that he’s an accountant in Cincinnati except, “Cincinnati. Accountant. Good.”
This has roughly the effect on incipient relationships that icebergs have on shipping lanes.
How about, “How would you advise a layman to get the best possible briefing on small-business accounting without going to classes?”
He can say a lot to that—enough to tell you if he’s worth making talk!
Why don’t more people use the can opener of Advice on other people?
For the same reason more people don’t swing golf clubs correctly the very first time. People resent the need to “learn” anything as simple as swinging a stick or talking—until they learn how dramatically a tip or two improves their game.
Some things we say translate into “I crave your body.”
Other things translate into “I admire your clothing.”
Seeking Advice means “I need your mind!”
Here’s What’s Remarkable About You
When I was editor of our University of North Carolina newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, we proudly billed ourselves as “The Only College Daily, Except Monday, in the South, Except Texas’’!
Sure, it was self-mocking and flippant, but after the ensuing chuckle was forgotten, we took deep, quiet pride in producing the only college newspaper that came out almost every day in our entire gigantic region of the nation, except for one sole, solitary other one over a thousand miles away.
My Cousin Henry lived in the little town of Weldon, North Carolina. By comparison, my Greensboro was huge. One day, in boyish bullying fashion, I was teasing Henry for living in a town as small as Weldon.
“It must save a lot of money,” I said, “living in a town where you can put the signs that say ‘Entering Weldon’ and ‘Leaving Weldon’ on the same post!”
Henry was ready. “Weldon may not be as large as Greensboro,” he replied, “but in 1886, Weldon was one terminal of what was then the second-longest railroad in the world.”
I didn’t run to petition my parents to move to Weldon. I
didn’t fall to my knees and apologize to Cousin Heniy.
But I quit teasing him.
Comic Myron Cohen told many memorable stories, but the only one he needed to tell to ensure his immortality was the one about the suspicious husband who barged into the bedroom after letting his wife think he was out of town, jerked open the door of her closet, and, sure enough, found another man there, naked and cringing behind the dresses.
“What are you doing here?” the husband demanded.
The famous reply came in a weak voice gagging with fear.
“Everybody’s got to be someplace.”
Interesting point. We, who at no extra cost would just as soon have people like us and want to help us, can use that point.
Yes, there is only one President of the United States at any one time. And there’s only one Academy Award winner for Best Actor. There is one heavyweight champion, one author of the number-one best seller, one wealthiest person, one Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one mayor of the town, one American ambassador to Poland, one owner of the horse that won the Kentucky Derby, and so on.
Nonetheless, .everybody’s got to be something!
And everybody likes to think that the something he is, is special, worthy, and deserving of far more recognition than it L.usually gets from others. Most people are sentenced to a lifetime of always having to mention what it is that makes them special themselves, and never knowing the joy of having it brought up by others.
Play a game. The game we normally play in conversation with new people is undirected small talk: the game of “Where are you from?”; the game of minimum give and no enthusiasm; the game of being testy, grouchy, flaccid, bored, and boring. We fill silence with “talk” as a sort of obligation to our species, like spiders weave webs, beavers build dams, wolves growl, and raccoons nose into garbage cans.
Our motivation is similar to that of lightning. When lightning flashes, it has no intention of illuminating, clarifying, pointing, emphasizing, or helping the lost shepherd
find his way. All that lightning wants to do is release a bolt of electricity into the earth that’s gotten too built up to hang out up there in the clouds anymore. And that’s usually all we’re doing when we “converse.” Silence “draws” us into speech, much like the ground draws the electrical charge down from the clouds.
There’s no need to play the dreary game of answering unnecessary questions with short, grudging answers while trying to fake at least some interest and concealing at least some of your boredom. Talk show hosts and hostesses make a living making other people talk. Talk host training teaches a trick that makes people talk as though they were suddenly paid by the word.
Notice how talk hosts on TV and radio introduce their guests. You’ll discover a gap so glaring between the great talk hosts and the also-rans that you’ll wonder why you never noticed it before and, even more bewildering, why the also-rans never noticed it before!
The ordinary talk hosts—the ones whose names, stations, and time slots you can’t quite remember—do their introducing flat-footedly: “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight we’re proud to have the distinguished author of—” That kind of introduction betrays a host whose attitude says, “I’m an official host, certified by my employment at this station. My guest is an official guest, certified by a publisher who published his book and a public relations person who called me and suggested I interview him on my show. Out there waits an official audience, certified by the fact that if there weren’t one, this station would have gotten wise by now and replaced me.
That audience is eager to have none other than me ask questions of whomever I’ve selected as today’s guest, so all I have to do is remove the cellophane and cut the cake, and it doesn’t particularly matter how.”
The great talk hosts make no such pat assumptions as to their “command” of an audience. Their attitude goes more like: “There are sixty-five radio stations and about as many other TV channels competing with me for my audience’s attention at this instant. Plus there are lots of other things those in the audience might be doing in life right now, for pleasure and profit, that have altogether nothing to do with listening or watching talk shows.
“Therefore, I’ve got the obligation to reach out and grab them. I’ve got to be so interesting I obliterate all notions of their drifting away to other attractions and pursuits. I’ve got to start with an earthquake and work up to a climax. And, may I never for an instant forget, I’ve got to score a knockout in every single round to break even.”
The great ones go like heat-seeking missiles to the gut-work of a guest’s specialness and make him sound so interesting that the audience is held prisoner.
Tex McCrary was famous for fencing in a whole audience with one line of introduction to a guest. You never heard him’ introduce George Jessel, for instance, as “a great wit who emcees some of our most prestigious dinners, luncheons, and banquets.” McCrary would bring Jessel on as “the Toastmaster-General of the United States.”
Bill Zeckendorf was not merely ‘ ‘the well-known builder. ’ ’ Far from it. He was “the man who’s carved his name in stone and steel all across the countryside.” Irina Shapiro was not “the young daughter of UPI’s Moscow correspondent Henry Shapiro who went to high school in the Soviet Union all during the height of the Cold War.” She became the “world’s only girl of two worlds.” Labor mediator Theodore Kheel, when brought to McCrary’s microphones in the middle of a major labor dispute he was trying to help settle, was not “a prominent labor mediator currently involved in trying to mediate between labor and management in the crisis.” Not at all. He was the “catalyst on a hot tin roof.”
Theo Bikel has probably “outranged” every other actor in history. He’s played parts as varied as a Greek quisling, a Scottish gravedigger, a Soviet submarine commander, the captain in The Sound of Music, and dozens of others as dizzily disconnected one from the other as the above. Bikel, when introduced by McCrary, was not just an “actor with an extraordinary range of roles.” He was the “man of a million faces and a million places.” Transport union leader Mike Quill was the “man who makes New York stop and go.”
You fear you’re not as clever as McCrary? You could never come up with little “whiplashers” that sum up a person’s specialness so deftly? You’re probably right; but so what? You don’t need to. All you need to do is examine the material—the background, qualifications, attributes, and capabilities of the person you’re cornered with at the party and ask yourself, “If I were this person, what would I be secretly proud of and hopeful that somebody besides myself would notice?”
In’“high school I was on the wrestling team. For some marvelous reason, I also begged my parents to buy me foreign language courses, which I studied at home. I was not that good a wrestler. I was not that good a linguist. But dammit, I was the only wrestler anybody had ever heard of who took Norwegian grammar books on out-of-town wrestling team trips with him!
And I liked that. I liked it long before I knew it was supposed to be called a “self-image” and everybody was supposed to try to have a good one. I admired the “balance” of it all. If somebody on campus teased me for losing to my opponent from N.C. State the night before, I wanted to grab him by the collar and say, “All right, pal, but could that gorilla who beat me conjugate ‘henvende seg, ’ ask the name of the pretty blonde who’s smiling at him at the Oslo airport, or buy himself a jockstrap in Trondheim?”
Conversely, when some horn-rimmed detractor ridiculed me for speaking such miserable Norwegian, I wanted to grab him and say, “All right, pal, if I had no other interests but study like you obviously don’t, I could probably get forty-four percent more of my verb endings correct, but / am a wrestler! I fight! I make my way through the world of contact sports with men! What would you with your oh-so impeccable Norwegian do if you were attacked by a drunk in a bar?”
I never actually grabbed anybody and told him anything of the kind. Knowing it and thinking it was sufficient armor against all the put-downs addressed to my wrestling and my Norwegian.
That brings us to the good stuff. When a compliment came in on my wrestling, it was joyously received. When a compliment on my Norwegian or some other language I was studying came in, it too was joyously received. On those much less frequent occasions when somebody said, “You know, there are very few people who put equal stress on accomplishments of the Inincf’-ancl the body. That’s what’s remarkable about you—that dwarfed mere “joyously received!” That was a joy I made promises I’d one day bring to others. It was more than a double compliment. It was more than a compliment arithmetically or geometrically progressed.
It was a compliment positioned between sound minors that reverberated into infinity!
Look around. There are a lot of deserving people inside whom a tiny tap from you can strike a Chinese gong reverberating good feeling.
* * *
Let’s call the young man who keeps Norwegian phrase books in the locker with his wrestling tights a multidimensional person. And let’s call his less accomplished neighbor who only wrestles, or who only studies Norwegian, a unidimensional person.
Now we’re about to see what’s remarkable about all of us.
Which are you, uni- or multidimensional?
And which are most of the people you know, uni- or multi-?
Got it?
We, don’t you see, are all nice and mu/ridimensional!
They, however—the rest of them out there—are almost without exception, unidimensional. They are all simple, non-differentiated, single-cell, single-cylinder Johnny-one-notes!
Get off the game, then, of small talk carried to the point where it’s a declaration of mutual non interest. And make the new game “How quickly can I ferret out your specialness and let you know I’ve spotted your multidimensionality?” instead^
The minute you start looking, whoppers come leaping right out at you.
She’s a psychiatrist, let’s say, and she spent a year in the Peace Corps in Malaysia befor
e going to medical school.
Neither fact really excites you all that much. You really cannot come up with a question or angle on psychiatry that hasn’t already been corkscrewed into the ground, and the Peace Corps puts your feet to sleep.
If that’s your attitude, halt! You must be cured before you victimize another person. Better you should blow smoke into that woman’s lungs than ice water upon her accomplishments!
Why don’t more of us let ourselves get more gee-whizzy about the accomplishments of others? Why don’t we smile approvingly and bathe those of achievement in the radiance of our admiration?
Answer: for the same reason balls don’t roll uphill.
An accomplishment, however trivial, is a reflection upon all who haven’t similarly accomplished.
Congratulations to the Japanese, not for overcoming that ungenerous weakness (they haven’t), but for at least admitting it. One of the most oft-repeated cliches in Japan is, “The nail that sticks up shall be hammered flat.’’
Defense attorneys want defendants to admit as little of their guilt as possible. Sure, we want to congratulate those of our peers who achieve, but as little as possible. (Subtract those unstinting congratulators who are much younger, much older, not construable as being in competition with the one being congratulated, or who anticipate favors from the one they’re unstintingly congratulating—they’re on another track!)
Let’s stick now to peers, those whose successes could have been our successes—a condition more and more devoutly to be desired as details of each success emerge. Why are we so ^afraid to haul off and salute our peers of accomplishment? /Their success was not achieved at the expense of our own.
There’s a meanness darting to and fro under our oceans of self-esteem. If it were a beached whale, it would look something like this:
“You’re telling me of your success in one of your endeavors. If all you say is true, then you have more right at this instant to have a good feeling about yourself than I have to have a similarly good feeling about myself. You, in other words, are ahead of me. And I lament that. And there’s a Fifth Amendment coiled within the human soul that provides that I need do or say nothing to intensify the negative feeling caused by your being ahead of me. So, ‘Congratulations. ’ Two and a half cheers. But you may be lying. (I hope you are!) Your fortune may turn before dawn. So don’t expect me to cut cartwheels in your behalf, at least until more evidence is in.” Most of us are clever enough to congratulate those we don’t really feel like congratulating just enough to avoid suspicion of soreheadism. We cover our troubled waters with sufficient foam and lather to make our approbation seem standard and in order.
Making People Talk Page 9