I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I say the tale as ’twas said to me.
Great conversation are, for the most part, about ideas. They have no plot and no narrator. Rather, they are equal part telling and listening — a dialog, which, with luck, may lead some place unforeseen. Talking about ideas appeals to the cerebral, relies on reason, and cheerfully gets by without direct speech. It’s hard for someone to show off when discussing ideas, because, by the virtue of subordinating himself to reason, one consents to abate the self.
In reality, most conversations are not about ideas. Most conversations are not even conversations; they are are monologues. Most people don’t know how to speak about ideas, they only know how to recount events by telling stories. If you’re lucky, people will take turns in telling their stories, so that everyone has a chance, but, more likely, everyone will be held captive by a few. The experience of listening to other people’s stories ranges from agreeable to onerous. What follows is the list of four kinds of stories, masquerading as conversations, each one circle deeper into the colloquial inferno.
Circle Ⅰ: Stories about Self
I think that in a conversation, the prevailing conflict in the human psyche is the contradiction between the desire to talk about oneself and the fear of self-exposure. If I’m the only person I can talk to about myself, then that would make for a very solitary existence. But sharing with others the inmost is also a gamble on their discretion. This gamble is particularly reckless when you spill your guts out to several people at once.
You should never fear talking about yourselves one-on-one with your real friends¹, and you should always remember to hearten your collocutor to do the same; the less equal-footed is your conversation, the more it resembles a paid session with an analyst. But you should always resist talking about yourselves in larger groups because the name for that is pontification.
Circle Ⅱ: Stories about People Both of You Know
These are the stories your collocutor tells you about someone both of you know. Since you are familiar with the subject of the story, there’s a chance you may like it — so long, of course, as the subject is sympathetic to you. Watch out for the gossip though. The way to tell it from a story is by the overage of innuendo.
Circle Ⅲ: Stories about Other People, Whom Only the Speaker Knows
Even in small groups, conversations often deteriorate into free associations, where a few storytellers usurp all the airtime. The problem is exacerbated by the simple fact that the chance of finding a mutual acquaintance in a group approaches zero very fast, as the size of the group increases even moderately. If the participants could up the game and talk about ideas, the problem would be solved: it should be easy to find an idea interesting to everyone in a group of people brought together by choice, not chance. But, for the most part, they can’t.
Circle Ⅳ: Stories about Other People, Whom Even the Speaker Doesn’t Know
The worst kind of story you’ll ever hear is a story about someone whom not only you, but even the raconteur does not know, a second-hand regurgitation of an anecdote from a previous circle. This is where you should feel free to get out your phone and conspicuously give it your complete attention, for there’s nothing an intelligent listener can say or ask in response to a recycled anecdote.
This is where this story might end, but here’s the pinch: the word “fiction”, in the English language, has the other meaning — literature. All (or effectively all) works of fiction are stories about people the author does not really know. Even the ones written in the first person are still stories about people the author does not know. Colloquial hell, it turns out, doesn’t only have circles: it is a circle. There is no bottom: what is the worst kind of conversation to endure is also how people came up with folklore, and ultimately, after figuring out how to put it to paper, literature.
¹ In fact, this is the definition of a real friend — one with whom you can let your guard down. More on this here (tbd).