The Art of Being Outshone
I
SOMEBODY is forever sending me literature about how to shine at dinners and in the social circle generally. It seems there are books full of anecdotes, repartees, and bright remarks, which, if memorized and opportunely remembered, are supposed to enliven these occasions. The master of these books dazzles and entertains every circle he enters. He holds the spotlight and the centre of the stage. Murmurs of admiration attend his brilliant sallies. He is, in short, the life of the party.
Others, it appears, just as good as he, go home depressed and disheartened. They have not shone. The spotlight has not rested well-pleased upon them. They have been obscure. Sound cause for gloom! Their minds, destitute of the thousand epigrams of the master spirits of the ages, have contributed nothing brilliant to the conversation.
It is evident from the amount and tone of this literature that one must shine to be happy. Without shining, life is not worth while. One is a failure, and might as well give up. It is the obviousness of this truth that provides a public for the literature. People have, indeed, often felt the sense of discouragement these circulars describe, and are glad to find a promise of relief, even though at the fateful moment they fumble in memory for the bright saying of Marcus Aurelius or Mark Twain which the occasion so pressingly demands. Perhaps, after all, it may be more practical to go to a dinner with just one bright but borrowed remark stored up for the occasion, and, watching narrowly your opportunity, to hurl that, like Bruce’s heart, into the fray, than to carry in such a sackful of anecdotes gathered at random from five hundred minds.
There is of course nothing new about this yearning for notice and conspicuousness. It is an inheritance from childhood and even from antiquity. Epictetus discussed it. It is hard, he admits, to hear another man discoursing brightly on a subject beyond your depth, and on which you have nothing to say. But courage! Another time the talk will be of grammar, and it will be your turn to shine.
The illuminating thing about this is that the fine old Stoic himself was not above the common desire to shine, only he had sense enough to see that no sensible person expects or wishes to do all the shining. Every dog is entitled to his day — that is, of course, if he can get it. I do not say he would have ordered the books advertised above; he knew he needed no such meretricious aids to luminosity, being convinced that, taking the season together, he and every other well-disciplined philosopher were sure in due time to get their conversational innings. But he was evidently strongly disposed to have those innings soon or late.
It is odd that it did not occur to the ancient Stoic or the modern Epicurean that the true solution of the problem, which is evidently so vital to them, is the cultivation of the art of transition. To the master of transition, it matters not whether the talk be of the Taj Mahal or of the composition of rubber. Give him but the suspicion of a lull in the conversation and he will with a mere phrase bring it round to port.
Only last night on the way into the dining room I heard an accomplished converser lamenting the general lack of interest in Africa — one of his best themes. What weakness! Let him but contrive a set of good transitions, and I’ll warrant he can bring the talk back to Africa though it have strayed as far afield as the nebula of Andromeda or the Great Hereafter. As thus: ‘How different that is from Africa, now!’ or ‘You don’t say so! Well, I remember once in Africa . . .’
Of course we all know the conversational superman; he has been with us since boyhood, to which period of development he properly belongs. He is always capping your modest contributions with something bigger. If you have slain your thousands, he has slain his tens of thousands. You timidly intimate that your assessed valuation is two thousand dollars; he cries that his is four. You say that you are to speak in Freeport; he says that they had previously asked him. You tell how long it took to drive a certain route; his time was better by hours. It does not matter that you happen later to detect much exaggeration in these quick rejoinders — as that his assessment is only about half yours. The mischief is done, or, rather, the success achieved. For evidently the skill of the thing lay in thinking quickly of the better story and putting it over convincingly. It is not a matter of fact, but of art.
Such men are not liars. They are great hearty boys who have never learned the art of being outshone. Their fish are always bigger, their scores lower, their losses greater, their winnings larger, their operations dreadfuler than yours. They have no need of the thousand best epigrams of the world’s five hundred brightest minds, nor need they, like Epictetus, wait for another day when the talk is of grammar in order to shine. Their simple art is to snatch a reflected glory from every other’s remark and multiply it thirty, sixty, a hundred fold.
What a good thing it is that there are no such women! Yet this may seem to have an ungracious ring; which reminds us: Let us now praise gracious women, the noble army of hostesses and dinner partners who listen patiently and with interest marvelously sustained — or simulated — to your interminable anecdotes and expositions, which are often no better than the thousand best efforts of the world’s master minds, to say the least. Surely if there be pretense in this, the Recording Angel, if he must jot it down, will never be better occupied than in dropping some of his tears upon the page.
II
I have just had a delightful interview with a charming old gentleman. I enjoyed it exceedingly, but as I look back upon it two or three things emerge like islands from a sea. He was, it appeared, the best student and the best speaker his ancient college had ever produced, and to this day his record has not been surpassed. He next formed the laudable ambition of making himself the best preacher in the country, and, from all I can gather, he made decided progress in that direction. But I am fearful that he has never progressed far in the gentler art of being outshone.
A distinguished editor, on being asked on what principle he chose the articles that he printed, said that if a thing was so absorbing that a man would stop eating his roast beef to listen to it, he thought it worth publishing. No fairer description of prandial achievement can well be framed. And yet, with hundreds of thousands of copies of the select epigrams of the master minds flying about and equipping the most ordinary people overnight to hold dinner tables spellbound, even the roast-beef test may fail. To have the art, literature, history, politics, and business of the world on the tip of your tongue (What a tongue, to have such a tip!) may deceive even the elect into supposing that you know something about them. Better not make any pauses, — except for the inevitable murmurs of admiration, which, it seems, are guaranteed, — else some dull, malicious fellow may ask a disconcerting question. Still, not if he is spellbound; the thing is unthinkable. But for safety’s sake a good dashing transition should always be taken along, as a kind of conversational parachute, in case your gas fails.
I have long been thinking that our artists should be painting scenes in real life, such as an automobile salesman and his prey. But whose pencil could portray the dinner table at which two accomplished possessors of the thousand epigrams of the master spirits should meet? The imagination reels at the picture. Gastronomically, the dinner would of course be a failure, for no one would have a moment’s attention to give the food. One would inevitably get the jump upon the other at the start, and then, pausing presently for the inevitable murmur of admiration, would be dismayed to hear the other strike in with some apposite observation of Josh Billings or Hippocrates, and feel the spotlight fading from his brow. Can he regain it? His adversary is forewarned by now, and, if he knows his stuff, will give him no further chance, but rather a much-needed lesson in the Art of Being Outshone.
This ‘ hyperlampophobia,’ or dread of being outshone, has begun to affect literature. Where is the so-called hero of yore? In many a modern tale the hero is really the simplest, fondest, most blundering being in the whole cast. Is it not clear that the old-style smart individual who easily gets his own way in all circumstances — an obvious aristocratic type — is out of date? The modern hero does not command your homage; he appeals to your compassion. You perceive that the poor fellow needs help, and how you long to be at his side and warn and cheer him, as, helpless with horror, you behold him blindly plunging deeper and deeper into difficulties. Only when his situation has become absolutely irremediable does the author let up on him. All this, of course, is for your good, so that you may not feel yourself too palpably outshone.
Take the old detective story. All was hopelessly obscure until the great detective entered. It presented no particular difficulties to him. A few blood drops, cigarette stubs, or bits of tweed, and the thing was done, all by himself. But nowadays there is a whole school of detective literature from which the detective hero has actually disappeared! He has simply vanished, leaving no trace. The truth is, we have grown tired of the omniscient detective who finds everything so easy, and prefer to see difficulties more democratically unraveled by a number of people, each contributing his bit and making the solution a social process.
Modern publicity methods have long since accustomed us to having our failings of every kind familiarly assumed and played upon, and we do not so much mind this unless our moral characters are impugned. Thus the frank challenge, ‘Why let Blunders in speech and writing put you at a Disadvantage? Beware of shabby English! Errors in Pronunciation can ruin the whole Effect of what you say!’ while perhaps unconventional, does not offend us. Our English may be blundersome, shabby, and mispronounced, as the advertiser so calmly assumes, but if it is a bit informal at times, it is our own business, no doubt. But to approach us on the cool supposition that we go home from a party unhappy if we have not done all the talking is a different matter, and seems to assume that we are all indeed but children of a larger growth, if even that. To monopolize conversation is a thing no civilized man should ever want to do.
Psychologists suggest that it is really better for our mental health to do a good deal of listening, claiming that in this way we may get some of the stimulus and intellectual pabulum that our spirits require. Experienced dinersout, with a large and quick turnover, will certainly confirm this, telling tonight the best things they heard last night, but keeping silent long enough to pick up a few new trifles for to-morrow, when they sincerely hope to encounter a new circle of guests to try them on.
Such is, we believe, the democratic way of life, but it is not that of the conversational crammers, on the one hand, or of Epictetus on the other. They both aim at a larger but slower business; at least, Epictetus did. This was his professorial bent: unhappy except wdien lecturing; an evident stranger to the joyful activity of the intercreative mind. But how much better, really, to match wits with some capable table companion, until some new phase of common experience or interpretation emerges, to the general joy! A far better thing this than lecturing each other alternate evenings, you to-night, I to-morrow night! Little genius in such division of labor.
For what we are here concerned with is of course nothing less than the art of conversation. How many a man who thinks he is talking well, if lengthily, has really been launched and steered upon his course by the unobtrusive skill of his neighbor at table, who listens with apparent delight as he details the exploits of his lifelong hero: —
‘I said, “Stand up; tell your story.” He did. I said, “Sit down. Now tell yours.” She did. I said, “You were right; he was wrong,”’ and so on.
Such people are doomed to starvation, psychologists declare. They merely recite their little Odyssey until they are exhausted, and when rested up recite it over again, never giving themselves any chance to take in new ideas. It is perhaps comforting to reflect upon this righteous law of conversational compensations; and yet it is too often we rather than they who suffer the direct effects of their famine.
III
I am not exactly a hermit. To me the most interesting thing about this world through which I am passing is the people who live in it. They are also the most amusing thing in it. This is the heart of humanism — the world of personality over against the material world. The latter sometimes seems to engross us, and it is heresy to depreciate it. But, vast as it is, I sometimes wonder if it is any more stupendous than a great man’s idea of it. Wonderful as it is, is it any more wonderful than that he can form and carry in his mind an image, however imperfect, of it? Yet he is but one of millions, every one of whom forms and carries such an image, material, social, moral, economic. Every person carries a world about with him of his own creation or, at least, discovery. None of these images is wholly true, yet every one of them possesses some truth. No two of them are alike; perhaps no two of them should be alike. They are of an inexhaustible variety, of attitude, opinion, information. It is a mistake to suppose that only the intelligent have definite opinions; the most definite opinions are held by the unintelligent, and they also hold them most strongly.
It is this that literature seeks to mirror, catching perhaps a hundred-millionth part, the best or worst, and ‘reducing it to writing,’ as we rightly say—for how much it is reduced! Which is what gives to literature such interest and glory as it possesses. But the thing itself is vastly greater than any record or even experience — not to say fancy — of it.
You see a man coming up the street, a person perhaps of little social, political, or financial standing. None the less, he carries about with him a private individual universe, as definite as your own, and in some parts, at least, sounder than yours. In it he alone is judge; his estimates and opinions prevail. You yourself are to him but a part of it, and subject to his verdicts and appraisals. If he is informed, capable, and wise, his ideas will be sounder; but many an ignorant and prejudiced person, if he be reflective and kind, carries about a universe well worth knowing.
Everybody is, in short, a kind of peripatetic Atlas bearing a world upon his shoulders. More than a world — a universe. It is no great flight of fancy to imagine the city streets filled with people so occupied. Yet most of them give no sign of finding the task burdensome. They are more like people carrying balloons. This is certainly a better figure, for if some are weighed down with the weight of their universe, others are plainly buoyed up by theirs. These balloons are of very different sizes, so that while one is hardly visible, another fills the whole sky. But, you will say, this means endless collisions between rival universes. And of course that is precisely what is constantly taking place, unless one knows how to handle his private universe with good taste and good manners. It is like the conflict of umbrellas on a crowded street on a rainy day, only on a much grander and more serious scale. The balloons are also of very different densities, and of different colors — black, blue, gray, brown, rose, yellow, purple, and orange. Everyone is very sensitive about his own particular one; nobody likes to have any liberties taken with his universe. And how fortunate it is that they are really or nearly invisible! Otherwise we should all be too often and too palpably outshone.