{"id":24,"date":"2006-11-16T14:29:06","date_gmt":"2006-11-16T18:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=24"},"modified":"2006-11-16T14:29:06","modified_gmt":"2006-11-16T18:29:06","slug":"quote-from-nyrb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=24","title":{"rendered":"Quote from NYRB"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Russell Baker surveys Stephen Miller&#8217;s new book, <strong>Conversation: A History of a Declining Art,<\/strong> in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, .<\/p>\n<p>What I liked was his description of what makes a good conversation:<\/p>\n<p>Both participants listen attentively to each other; neither tries to promote himself by pleasing the other; both are obviously enjoying an intellectual workout; neither spoils the evening&#8217;s peaceable air by making a speech or letting disagreement flare into anger; they do not make tedious attempts to be witty. They observe classic conversational etiquette with a self-discipline that would have pleased Michel de Montaigne, Samuel Johnson, or any of a dozen other old masters of good talk whom Miller cites as authorities.<\/p>\n<p>This etiquette, Miller says, is essential if conversation is to rise to the level of\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwell, &#8220;good conversation.&#8221; The etiquette is hard on hotheads, egomaniacs, windbags, clowns, politicians, and zealots. The good conversationalist must never go purple with rage, like people on talk radio; never tell a long-winded story, like Joseph Conrad; and never boast that his views enjoy divine approval, like a former neighbor of mine whose car bumper declared, &#8220;God Said It, I Believe It, And That Settles It.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to snip this and put it in the opening portion of my next few syllabi&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russell Baker surveys Stephen Miller&#8217;s new book, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art, in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, . What I liked was his description of what makes a good conversation: Both participants listen attentively to each other; neither tries to promote himself by pleasing the other; both &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=24\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Quote from NYRB<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-o","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}