Conversations Make a Difference

Today, we find ourselves drowning in words, radio talk shows; television talk shows; magazine, television and radio interviews by and with the hosts of radio and television talk shows; robocalls from political candidates and their opponents; tape-looped commercials at the grocery store checkout line; spam emails; junk faxes; blogs, blogs about blogs, and blogs about blogs about blogs. Yet, amid this surfeit of words, we find ourselves starved for real conversation, for those ineffable moments when we connect with another to discover a heart open and a mind ablaze.

We long to learn more about conversation. what it is, what it was, and what it should be. Unfortunately, this book doesn't tell us any such thing. Mr. Miller merely presents us with an undigested agglomeration of facts and quotations, shying away from the historian's necessary intellectual task of marshaling those facts into a compelling case for one side or the other. And it doesn't help that he is a numbingly pedantic writer: "One cannot be a good conversationalist if one lacks a sense of humor," Miller writes, in a proclamation that cries out for a gloss of hot pink highlighter. "Equally important is being a good listener." Particularly annoying is his persistent habit of making a statement, then backing it up with a quotation that says precisely the same thing. "If we think someone finds us boring, we dislike that person. As La Rochefoucauld says: 'We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those who find us boring.'