Conversation: A History of a Declining Art [Paperback]

Stephen Miller's historical study of conversation, its development and decline, is one of the most provocative books I've read in a long time. Conversing is something we spend a good part of our life doing, yet how many of us think consciously of what it really is (and was) or how we might better our understanding and practice of it?

Miller has an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge but does not overwhelm the reader with this. Rather, he tells his story with wit and clarity, guiding us from the Book of Job and Plato's Symposium (whose discussion of Socrates as a conversationalist is fascinating) to 18th century Britain, where we meet brilliant conversationalists of a different sort, Defoe, Swift and Johnson, among them, all the way to the 21st century U.S. and the factors that have caused a worrisome loss in conversational ability.

There are gems of information throughout the book: the difference between "raillery" and "repartee" (the first is part of successful conversing, the second isn't); the crucial role of London's coffee houses in conversation (there was 4,000 of them at one time); the nature of conversation in the 17th and 18th salons of Paris, which were headed by women of culture; and judgments about various public figures and their conversation (Stalin delivered boring monologues, Clinton talked more than he listened, and Goethe was drowned out by the chatter of Madame de Stael).

Miller has provided me with a lifetime supply of amusing anecdotes and quotes appropriate for "cocktail conversation." If I have one complaint--and it's not a complaint about the book at all, but of how it affected me--it's that I have become so obsessed with the subject that I can no longer carry on a conversation without grading myself!

This would be a great gift for those in your circle who don't know how to converse.

Miller's faith in the value of good-humored, reasonable talk among civilized people flies in the face of the current tendency toward opinionated,virulent, and self-serving public discourse. Yes, he rants occasionally, but the ranting is funny and right-on, a slam-dunk comment on the level to which manners have slumped in our age. His scholarship is impeccable and his style a model of what conversation should be--witty and wise. Barbara Gardner, PhD, Mendocino, CA

Every now and then a book comes along which focuses on some aspect of our everyday life experience , and in tracing its history and development provides us with a sense that a new world has opened up to us which we had all along and did not know about it. So Stephen Miller in focusing upon the subject of ' conversation' makes us understand ourselves and our world in a new and yet somehow familiar way.

Whether it is Job denying his friends' false words of comfort, or Socrates disquietingly upsetting the settled citizens of Athens ' conversation ' is for Miller a 'discussion of great and small topics by people who practice mutual tolerance for opposing viewpoints." As Miller sees it the great climax of Conversation as Art came in the eighteenth century with Johnson, Boswell. Hume, Lady Montagu, the whole coffeehouse cast who colorfully lambasted each other with their own often wildly imaginative opinions.

Miller fills his pages with anecdotes and memorable remarks. A selection is provided by E. Rothstein in his highly favorable review of the book in the 'NY Times'.

"Cicero gave advice about conversation (It ought "to be gentle and without a trace of intransigence; it should also be witty"). Montaigne hailed its pleasures ("I find the practice of it the most delightful activity in our lives"). Henry Fielding praised it ("This grand Business of our Lives, the Foundation of every Thing, either useful or pleasant"). Adam Smith prescribed it (calling it one of "the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity").

Miller also records the remarks those who were critical of conversation such as Rousseau, Wordsworth,and many of the great American writers who preferred to converse with the Solitudes of Nature.

In fact Miller sees the United States as a place which especially in recent years with the development of so many high- tech forms of efficient, but laconic communication as being somewhat hostile to the art of conversation. Harold Bloom in writing about this book says in this regard that Miller sadly writes an 'elegy ' to the 'art of Conversation' while at the same time celebrating it.

I would only add one small personal remark. My great friend and teacher , the late David Hertzberg of blessed memory, with whom I would speak for hours used to say that ' The conversation of friends is the highest Torah'( Meaning the highest form of spiritual activity) I doubt that Stephen Miller had this kind of ' conversation' in mind but in surveying the subject he has made a real contribution to that 'general conversation of all intelligent people ' which is one form of human culture at its highest.

."