Making People Talk

  Haven’t you ever “caught” somebody who should have been exuberant about your success being merely animated? And haven’t you caught someone who should have been at least animated being merely supportive?

  An older man, a solid success by most standards, harbored major ambitions that eluded him. In his later years he developed what you could almost call a mechanical defense to protect himself against the success of others. If you happened, for example, to have written an article in a major magazine, he’d say yes, he saw it and it was great, congratulations and all that, but “Wow, did you see that article that began on the same page as yours? Now that article was so well written, and it really made me realize for the very first time how …”

  Let’s suppose you’d been promoted to sales manager of one of those major corporations with more than fifty different divisions. At the party to honor you, that same gentleman I would home in on you to get the details pretending keen interest to comprehend the full dimension of your success. “Now,” he’d open, “does this mean you’re responsible for all the products sold by the entire company?”

  He knew good and well it didn’t, but that forced you to say, “Oh, no, no, just the Attila division.”

  “Oh,” he’d say, faking regret that he’d sent you into retreat in front of all those people, “just the Attila division, huh? I see. I see.”

  The “I see” portion of his comment was melodied so as to apologize, almost, for having so clumsily been the one to reveal that there really wasn’t justification for all this excitement—that all you’re the new manager of, it turns out, is one lousy division nobody ever heard of, but what the hell, everybody likes a good party, and we have all too few occasions.

  I genuinely believe that if this gentleman had ever run into the President-elect the day after the election, he would have asked him, “What’s new?” And when the President-elect told him, “I’ve just been elected President,” he would say, “Oh, glad to hear it. Let’s see. Does that include Canada, too?”

  When the flustered, incredulous President-elect said,

  “No,” the gentleman would have quickly said, “Oh, I see.

  You mean only—only the lower part? Okay, okay. That’s great. Nice. Really nice.”

  This game I’m proposing makes it a lot easier to give a “glow” to others. The “scientifically” deduced compliment is a lot more fun to deliver than mere congratulations through a pasty-faced smile.

  Let’s go back to that psychiatrist who’d served in the Peace . Corps. Can’t you “read” her self-image?

  “No bookworm, I! Not for me, merely sitting in the comfort of an American medical school studying theories devised by Sigmund Freud from the comfort of a townhouse in Vienna. All that, yes, but not without undergoing rigors that exceeded anything Freud himself ever experienced, even when the Nazis threw him out of Vienna! Oh, the leavening and the toughening I’ve accrued, the kind few professionals in any field ever endure. Oh, the opportunity to gain firsthand and up-front observations of people and their problems in a part of the world where, psychotherapy doesn’t exist and probably wouldn’t even be believed. They, the other psychiatrists, the unidimensional psychiatrists, the normal psychiatrists, may be fully valid, competent, a total credit to our profession. Nothing wrong with that; nothing wrong with them. I. however, have, had Third World experiences, the very descriptions of which would have them whining, crumpling, and calling for stretcher-bearers! I am advantaged. I have experience in the field—and I mean the Southeast Asian field. I shall not exactly enter rooms full of others and yell, ’Hey, everybody, I’ve done time in Southeast Asia!’ In fact, I will demurely balance a wine glass in my little plate without dislodging my canape and make dulcet talk, self-effacingly as though I were just another ‘Uni.’ Inwardly, however, I shall treasure my superiority. And, perhaps, envy the good fortune of my patients.”

  Don’t assume that Clark Kent is the only one considerate enough to wear street clothes to conceal the fact that underneath it all, he’s really Superman. I’m not saying all of us do. I’m saying the lucky ones do.

  Though not heretofore quoted, President Eisenhower got vexed at young Congressman Richard Nixon as they were preparing to run together for President and Vice President for the first time. An aide told Ike about some comment or action Nixon had taken on his own without consulting Ike or the team, whereupon Ike snapped and said, “Damn him! He’s plugged into my socket!”

  That, of course, meant that whatever power Nixon had, it derived from Eisenhower. Fine. Eventually Nixon became a “socket” himself. Too many of us, however, feel valid only if we’re plugged in. “Superman” people don’t feel that way. On many an occasion when the power people at a party treated me like a black hole of invisibility, I plugged in to my own socket, drew myself up smartly, and said to myself, “The women I’d like to meet here all seem to have other agendas. The men, too, seem perfectly comfortable .in conversations that don’t involve me. How many of them, however, could pin a strong man’s shoulders to the mat, or translate for the King of Norway at the next goat cheese festival in Chicago?”

  He sells insurance, and baffles antique mirrors in his basement workshop.

  She imports batik from Indonesia, and finishes near the front in every marathon for women over fifty.

  He’s in the advertising business, and scales glaciers in Greenland.

  She’s a licensed real/estate dealer, and spends weekends showing ghetto kids how to clear away the rubble and plant gardens that wind up in newspaper feature stories every twelve to eighteen weeks.

  Interesting, wouldn’t you say?

  Don’t say it to them, if all it is to you is interesting. They think it’s a lot more than just interesting. They think the unexpected specialties they’ve acquired render them highly unusual, if not unique, individuals and deserving of virtually unending praise from those of merely ordinary pursuits.

  And they’re right.

  They rarely get the acclaim they feel they deserve. But that doesn’t make them quit feeling they deserve it. Their “starvation” is easy to explain. Multidimensional people bother unidimensional people. Strivers bother non strivers. Those who move forward reflect upon all who stand still. Therefore our instinct—our “normal” golf swing—tells us to notice their achievements only glancingly and acclaim them only slightly.

  Overcome that “normal” swing, and you can trigger fireworks—their egos exploding to color your skies.

  “Mirror baffling is one of the hardest crafts there is. I think it’s a little breathtaking to find the ability to sell insurance and baffle mirrors inhabiting the same person!”

  “Eastern wisdom, wisdom from the region your batik comes from, teaches that successful living is the balancing of yin and yang forces—opposites, that is. They preach it; you live it!”

  “If you’re in the advertising business, maybe you can tell me in a headline or so why those who make a good living with their wits so often go out like you do and court physical danger. I still tremble from what I read of those glaciers in old books about downed fliers in World War Two!”

  “Those who buy the land and sell the land aren’t usually the ones who love the land! Did you deliberately set out to bridge that chasm?”

  At the end of whatever line you choose to show recognition of a person’s multidimensionality, just add, “Tell me more. I’m interested.”

  Master the utterance of that line without guile, gush, false enthusiasm, or forced sincerity, and you’ve got one of the most formidable weapons in the entire arsenal of Making People Talk.

  “Tell me more. I’m interested.”

  Practice it. Let someone close to you grade you on the effortlessness and genuineness of your delivery. Don’t use it in real life until your grades are tops.

  “Tell me more. I’m interested.”

  Remember, it takes jacks or better to open. If, upon hearing that the person you’re talking to owns dealerships in used motorcycle parts, you were to say imm
ediately, “Tell me more. I’m interested,” he’ll suspect, quite correctly, that what you’re interested in is promoting a conversation with him doing all the work.

  You become the cartoon in which the sexiest and dizziest-looking chorus girl is leaning provocatively across the cocktail table into the face of the dullest and most unidimensional-looking businessman and saying, “You know, Mr. Abernathy, I’ll bet you’ve got to be a shrewd judge of character to make a go of it in industrial abrasives.”

  Let’s illustrate with the opposite of a remark that finds a skillful way to say, “Here’s what I find remarkable about you.”

  Sammy Davis, Jr., back in the days of racial tokenism, found himself the only black at a Fifth Avenue penthouse party of wealthy whites. A newly arriving white man was introduced to Davis by the host and promptly won the prize for the remark intended to ingratiate that, far from merely failing, had the dramatically opposite effect.

  The first line out of the white man’s mouth, before they’d even finished shaking hands, was, “My daughter goes to school with Ralph Bunche’s niece.”

  Ralph Bunche, a celebrity diplomat, was black. Sammy Davis, Jr. is black. Get it? The white man was trying to impress Sammy with the impeccability of his liberal credentials. That’s roughly equivalent to standing on your chair at a dinner party, clinking your knife against your cocktail glass for attention, and announcing to the assemblage that you don’t intend to steal any silverware that night.

  That remark didn’t say, “Here’s what I find remarkable about you.” It said, “Here’s what’s remarkable about me, which I’m afraid you won’t find out unless I tell you!”

  Talk hosts tend to “like” and therefore edify their guests for a simple reason. To show disdain and ask questions that • aim to invalidate your guest brings you right down with him. If you succeed in convincing the listeners that the guest is unimportant, the question that then arises is, how important can you be if you waste so much air time with unimportant people?

  Talk hosts develop the instinct to enhance whomever they’re talking to. The public’s instinct is less felicitous. It swings between neutrality and put-down.

  “When I was in England …” says the guest. And right away the interviewer remembers the part of the magazine article about the guest’s England trip and interrupts, saying, “You were a big hit in England. The Queen’s people lined you up for a command performance in less time than anyone since Maurice Chevalier.”

  That’s not a bad instinct: “Here’s what’s remarkable about you.” You’ll find dozens of openings to zing in “Here’s what’s remarkable” when you lift your blocking mechanisms and learn to look and listen for those openings.

  Admittedly it’s rough when the openings are deliberately laid out for you by an unbearably attention-hungry contender.

  I clearly recall, at the age of eight, a friend of my parents from New York coming to dinner. I remember hoping he wasn’t a good friend of my parents. I didn’t like him.

  He launched into some story about prominent Broadway personalities I only vaguely understood. He came to a line that I could tell by his face he liked a lot. It was, “… And then I called my good friend Walter Winchell.”

  For the benefit of those who came late to the twentieth century, Walter Winchell, even without television, had more raw power than anybody in the media today. If you took your four most powerful contemporary media personalities and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your rivalries to one side. We’re being challenged to see if all of you together can reach and convince as many people of anything as Walter Winchell did through his newspaper column and on radio, ’ ’ they couldn’t do it!

  That line of my parents’ friend hung like a levitating anvil over the dinner table. “… And then I called my good friend Walter Winchell.” I backed away.

  At the instant he said it, my father was distracted by the ringing phone, and my mother fixated upon a gravy leak from one of the side vents of the chicken. Neither seemed to hear him. Neither reacted. He cleared his throat and tried again. “… And, as I was saying, I then called my good friend Walter Winchell.”

  My parents’ full attention had not yet returned to normal, and again they failed to react.

  By the time he tried a third time, I was inwardly screaming to my parents, “Will one of you please be impressed. This man is in pain!”

  When my mother finally said, “Oh, do you know Walter Winchell?” you could see the after-the-storm rainbow beaming out of his soul.

  Of all the forms of violence you can commit upon deserving people, the least humane is deliberately failing to be impressed by what they’re saying.

  I say, yes, it’s submissive and acquiescent to haul off and be impressed with someone who’s obviously begging for it.

  On the other hand, it’s even more cruel to deny him and watch / him twist.

  If a baby were screaming for warmth, wouldn’t you reach down and cover him up? If a man walking in off the desert said, “I sure could use a glass of water,” wouldn’t you get him one? So what’s so different about saying, “Oh, do you know Walter Winchell?” Or, “Do you really go to the White House for breakfast?” “You mean they consulted you before the four-billion-dollar merger?” “King Hussein was so impressed with your analysis that his aide asked you for a memo?’ ’

  “Let me get this straight—you say during your college career you tackled four Heisman Trophy winners for a total loss of twenty-six yards?”

  The old lady gave as her excuse for never voting, “It only encourages them!” Admittedly, your surrendering to these cries for attention encourages the most malignant egos on earth.

  Your withholding of your little applause, however, will not discourage them, so why not anesthetize them with the injection of approval they’re crying for and put them out of their misery? Everybody loves the night nurse who agrees to strengthen the dose of painkiller the doctor prescribed. And if one fragment of their boasting turns out to be true, these‘people may be helpful to you later on.

  Of course, it’s more fun—and fruitful—to knife in and show surprise and approval for items they reveal about themselves in conversation when they’re not really trying to impress.

  “You mean it was you? All this time I thought you were talking about your father! You don’t look old enough to have been in World War Two!”

  “Did you say ten miles? Every day? No wonder you seem so fit!”

  “You knew back then the market was going to boom?”

  “You’re the only one I know who thought he could win!”

  “Bulgaria! I admire you. I wish I had the guts to break out of the London-Paris-Rome routine.”

  “You say you campaigned for equal rights in the Deep South in the fifties? That’s before it was fashionable. Or safe!”

  “The government should pay you to go around from party to party and tell that story. If we all had discipline like you, this would be a better country!”

  “You came that close to getting the part? You ought to preach on Sundays on how to keep bitterness out of your heart!”

  These all say, “I approve of i,” “I applaud you,’’

  “Here’s what’s remarkable about you.”

  You are, don’t forget, a twenty-four-hour-a-day broadcasting station. Some stations won’t play classical. Some stations won’t play rock. Have a closed-door meeting with your “program director. ’ ’ Are you willing to ‘‘play’ ’ melodies like “I approve of you’ ’ and the rest? If not, don’t even try. You’ll break spiritual bones in the workout, and you won’t do a good job.

  If your attitude is, sure, I’ll program whatever the audience wants, then “Approve,” “Applaud,” and “Remarkable” make a winning format.

  How can we explain that marvelous reaction we get from others when we reach out, reach in, and unfurl their specialness before one and all? After all, they don’t think they should have to wait for a sentient like you. They think they deserve that kind of attention
all the time.

  The answer was proclaimed to the world outside the Anniston, Alabama, train station many years ago when the northern businessman asked the redcap who’d carried his bags from the train to the taxi what the average tip was for a mission like that.

  “Oh,” said the redcap, “about five dollars.”

  The man peeled off a five-dollar bill and gave it to him. “Wow,” said the delighted redcap. “Thank you, sir!” “Wait a minute,” said the traveler. “If five dollars is an average tip, why all this ‘Wow, thank you sir’?”

  “Well,” said the redcap, “you’re the first one who’s come up to average around here in a long time!”

  Add Your Wrinkles

  “Lightning danced across the sky, and thunder applauded in the distance.”

  Isn’t that nice? That’s from the Reader’s Digest section they used to call “Picturesque Speech and Patter” somewhere in die 1940’s. It sets a high standard of expression. It’s considerably loftier than, for example, “Yucko. There’s a thunderstorm going on out there.”

  That line is what we call a wrinkle. It’s the conversational equivalent of the big play in baseball, football, tennis, or golf that erases hours of zombified watching from our faces and makes us say, “Wow!”—or preferably something with more of a wrinkle than “Wow!”