What Miller doesn't seem to grasp is that good conversation, like good literature, has always been a fairly rare phenomenon. It is not easy to put together a group of people who are intelligent, knowledgeable, open-minded, witty, and ready to talk, and then to get them to participate in a genuine conversation, without sliding into abstract argument or tendentious debate. When good conversation happens it is something to be celebrated. The fact that much talk falls short of this is not surprising, in this age, or for that matter in any age.
Miller doesn't set out to find where might be the oases of good conversation today and celebrate them and find out how and why they happened and how they might be expanded. Instead, he looks at popular culture and points out that it generally lacks the features of good conversation. The problem is that the same argument could easily have been made in the age of Plato or Samuel Johnson. Thus Miller attacks a movie like Easy Rider for its lack of conversation, while never mentioning a movie like My Dinner with Andre', which, with its extraordinary flow of narratives, could surely rival any 18th Century conversation in inventiveness and charm. And Miller attacks Jerry Springer and Oprah, without ever mentioning Charlie Rose. There are of course important questions here, like why we don't have more movies like My Dinner with Andre' or more shows like Charlie Rose, but Miller never addresses them.
For someone who is an advocate of conversation Miller is curiously disinterested in learning about other viewpoints and sharing with us how they might differ from his.
For instance, Miller makes a single reference to the emerging sociological discipline of conversation analysis, but how it bears on his subject is not explained. If he thinks it is worth nothing, why is that so? If he thinks it is worth something, why isn't it discussed?
And Miller refers to an article by Diane McWhorter in The American Scholar "for a view of conversation that is somewhat different from mine." (page 318). We never get to hear in what way her view is different or whether it is wrong. A conversation with Ms. McWhorter might have been interesting in a way that a mere dismissal isn't.
The blurb on the book's cover by Harold Bloom says that "it is clear that we can no longer inhabit a conversible world." That may be clear to Harold Bloom, but Miller's book doesn't prove it. What it shows is that if you start out with the assumption that the world is going to the dogs, you will surely find evidence that supports your thesis. Miller starts out with single-minded thesis - conversation is in decline - and plods mournfully on towards this conclusion for several hundred pages.
On the final page, we leave Miller, as he makes his way towards a dinner party with five other companions, in a somber, pessimistic mood after listening to Verdi's Requiem, wondering whether any good conversation will take place there. "Is it possible that the dinner will turn out to be a disaster?" he muses. One fears that anyone approaching a upcoming conversation in this frame of mind is likely to have his worst expectations realized. Indeed would anyone want to have a conversation with Miller if they knew that this was his mood? Is it likely that anything spirited, lively, funny or open-ended would emerge?
What Miller's book doesn't show is: what would a world of genuine conversation look and feel and sound like? What would the world of talk be like if people, instead of making mean-spirited abstract arguments from unchallengeable assumptions and political positions, were freely exchanging narratives in an open-minded, jovial, spirited fashion, willing to let the flow of thought go it might take them? What narrative capacities and strength of character would be required for such a world to exist, even on a small scale? How could we get there? What would it take? A book that answered these questions would be well worth having, but alas, it still remains to be written.
Stephen Miller: Conversation: A History of a Declining Art: Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006; ISBN-13-978-0-300-11030-2; 336 pages.
Miller doesn't set out to find where might be the oases of good conversation today and celebrate them and find out how and why they happened and how they might be expanded. Instead, he looks at popular culture and points out that it generally lacks the features of good conversation. The problem is that the same argument could easily have been made in the age of Plato or Samuel Johnson. Thus Miller attacks a movie like Easy Rider for its lack of conversation, while never mentioning a movie like My Dinner with Andre', which, with its extraordinary flow of narratives, could surely rival any 18th Century conversation in inventiveness and charm. And Miller attacks Jerry Springer and Oprah, without ever mentioning Charlie Rose. There are of course important questions here, like why we don't have more movies like My Dinner with Andre' or more shows like Charlie Rose, but Miller never addresses them.
For someone who is an advocate of conversation Miller is curiously disinterested in learning about other viewpoints and sharing with us how they might differ from his.
For instance, Miller makes a single reference to the emerging sociological discipline of conversation analysis, but how it bears on his subject is not explained. If he thinks it is worth nothing, why is that so? If he thinks it is worth something, why isn't it discussed?
The blurb on the book's cover by Harold Bloom says that "it is clear that we can no longer inhabit a conversible world." That may be clear to Harold Bloom, but Miller's book doesn't prove it. What it shows is that if you start out with the assumption that the world is going to the dogs, you will surely find evidence that supports your thesis. Miller starts out with single-minded thesis - conversation is in decline - and plods mournfully on towards this conclusion for several hundred pages.
On the final page, we leave Miller, as he makes his way towards a dinner party with five other companions, in a somber, pessimistic mood after listening to Verdi's Requiem, wondering whether any good conversation will take place there. "Is it possible that the dinner will turn out to be a disaster?" he muses. One fears that anyone approaching a upcoming conversation in this frame of mind is likely to have his worst expectations realized. Indeed would anyone want to have a conversation with Miller if they knew that this was his mood? Is it likely that anything spirited, lively, funny or open-ended would emerge?
What Miller's book doesn't show is: what would a world of genuine conversation look and feel and sound like? What would the world of talk be like if people, instead of making mean-spirited abstract arguments from unchallengeable assumptions and political positions, were freely exchanging narratives in an open-minded, jovial, spirited fashion, willing to let the flow of thought go it might take them? What narrative capacities and strength of character would be required for such a world to exist, even on a small scale? How could we get there? What would it take? A book that answered these questions would be well worth having, but alas, it still remains to be written.
Stephen Miller: Conversation: A History of a Declining Art: Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006; ISBN-13-978-0-300-11030-2; 336 pages.
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