A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation - Hardcover

Menaker, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446540021 ISBN 13: 9780446540025

Publisher: Twelve, 2010

Synopsis

A GOOD TALK is an analysis of and guide to that most exclusively human of all activities-- conversation.

Drawing on over forty years of experience in American letters, Menaker pinpoints the factors that drive and enliven every good conversation: the vagaries (and joys) of subtext; the deeper structure and meaning of conversational flow; the subliminal signals that guide our disclosures and confessions; and the countless other hurdles we must clear along the way. Moving beyond self-help musings and "how to" advice, he has created a stylish, funny, and surprising book: a celebration of "the most excusively human of all activities."

In a time when conversation remains deeply important-- for building relationships, for relaxing, even for figuring out who we are-- and also increasingly imperiled (with Blackberries and texting increasingly in vogue), A GOOD TALK is a refreshing celebration of the subtle adventures of a good conversation.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Menaker has been a part of America's life of letters for almost forty years. As a writer, he has met and talked to thousands of people about their work and their lives. He is widely read and well versed in psychological literature and practices and, as an editor at Random House, has had countless meetings and other exchanges with writers, agents, public figures, and ordinary people. His own writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Slate;he lives in New York with his wife and their two children.

Reviews

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Lisa Bonos bonosl@washpost.com Reading about conversation might seem paradoxical: a solitary take on a social activity. But Daniel Menaker's "A Good Talk" evokes its subject by taking on a personal, conversational tone. Menaker draws on a wide array of sources -- from Socrates to Samuel Johnson to Deborah Tannen -- to explain how conversation has evolved and how it works -- or doesn't. In keeping with his thesis that "it is you and I and other ordinary people who create the history of conversation, insofar as there is one," most of Menaker's conclusions and examples are drawn from his own life and career as a writer and editor for such outlets as the New Yorker and Random House. His refreshingly honest anecdotes reveal the roles and risks we take in conversation. But since most of the reported talk ranges from career advice for young writers to a claim by legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn that a certain pun "would destroy the magazine," Menaker's book might not speak to readers uninterested in the world of East Coast literary elites. The most useful section may be Menaker's discussion of FAQs (Frequently Arising Quandaries), such as how to survive exchanges with dull people (ask about their top 10 books, movies, etc. or about any personal grudges) and how to recover from causing inadvertent affronts (don't over-apologize!). His comments on e-communication are spot-on; he writes that cyberspace connections "take place noplace" and cautions that "an e-mail is forever. And forever forwardable and discoverable and litigable and revengeable and so on." However, this topic demands more probing: What does such a degradation of communication mean for us as a society? And how might we avoid further regression to the grunting state of our primate ancestors?
Copyright 2010, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

A fiction writer and former editor at the New Yorker and Random House, Menaker (The Treatment) regards conversation as a human art of great importance produced by all people everywhere. His witty approach is evident almost immediately, as he speculates on the creation of human language, moving on to the general rules of conversation, London coffeehouses as a forum for ideas, greetings, and name-droppers: They wrap the pig of name-dropping in a blanket of casualness, or even criticalness, and seem to actually believe you won't taste the inner wiener. At the book's core is a conversation between Menaker and an anonymous female writer. Taped in a Brooklyn restaurant, this lengthy transcript is analyzed in detail to show how the participants take risks, seek a common ground, interject humor, and discover perceptive insights about each other. Interview tactics and prepared remarks are covered, along with e-mail embarrassments, dating stratagems, sarcastic barbs, compliments, and interruptions. However, what makes a lasting impression is the parade of anecdotes about life in the corridors of the New Yorker and Random House, leaving the reader yearning for a full-scale Menaker memoir. (Jan.)
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A New Yorker editor for 26 years, Menaker views conversation as artifact, tracing its prehistoric beginnings with glottological theories on physical changes in the hominid larynx and mutation of the FoxP2 gene, which helped develop brain areas conducive to language, all before hominids left Africa. He posits that conversation developed as a hands-free substitute for socially interactive grooming, as with chimps, and, moving forward, considers conversation as aimless: not without aim, but without purpose, something that Americans, more than other modern societies, have been traditionally critical of. Within the context of the persistent legacy of Puritan “sobriety and pioneer pragmatism” favoring “those who talk little and accomplish much,” he seamlessly entwines his own wryly humorous observations, dialogue from Jonathon Swift and Fred and Ginger, discussion of the chi energy of conversation, and FAQ: Frequently Arising Quandries. These last include “Insults” (subdivided into Inadvertent Affronts and Deliberate, Frontal Attack), “Prepared Remarks,” and “Dating,” which includes observations by Samuel Johnson plus notes on seduction and courtship. A charming, useful, and entertaining approach to a fascinating topic. --Whitney Scott

Edition details

• Publisher: Twelve
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446540021
• ISBN 13: 9780446540025
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240