'The Essence of Good Talk'

A longtime reader of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the afternoon evaporated. Neither of us brought a script. “Improvisation is the essence of good talk,” writes Max Beerbohm in “Lytton Strachey” (1943). “Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out things prepared for us!” We all know people who come armed with pre-fabricated sermons of the “I-hate-Trump” or “Isn’t-climate-change-a-crime” genera. Or the ever-reliable “Woe is me.” Not so with Gary.

We talked about Chekhov, Dick Davis, our kids, Guy Davenport, retirement, Natsume Sōseki, grammar and the possibility that he might be traveling soon to Niger. I don’t enjoy competitive literary talk, people dedicated to showing off how many books they’ve read. I’d rather talk to a discriminating reader who has read a few books well. Gary is reading Chekhov’s “My Life,” probably my favorite story by the Russian. He understands the confluence of books and life, and whining about any of it is an affront to creation. I remembered some thoughts sent to me via email in 2013 by my friend D.G. Myers a little more than sixteen months before his death from cancer:

 

“I’ve been thinking how much of life is absorbed with ‘small cares’ that seem overwhelmingly important at the time--or at least disabling--which are forgotten in the sequel: the headaches, stomach aches, the traffic jams, the appointments which are late. Do these take up the majority of our time? They almost never make it into literature, and in fact literature seems an unstinting propaganda on behalf of the dramatic occurrences of human life. I may try to write about the ‘small cares,’ but I'm not sure yet what I want to say.”