'Silent Conversation'

“To talk and dispute are more the practices of the Platonic school than to read and meditate. Talkative men seldom read. This is among the few truths which appear the more strange the more we reflect upon them. For what is reading but silent conversation?” 

This passage is excerpted from Walter Savage Landor’s “Aristoteles and Callisthenes” in his Imaginary Conversations (1824-29). The speaker is Aristoteles, better known to us as Aristotle, Plato’s student. His listener, Callisthenes, was his student and great-nephew, a fourth-century B.C. Greek historian who befriended another of Aristotle’s students, Alexander the Great.

 

Just as we dislike having good conversation interrupted, so it is with serious reading. Some of us have learned to concentrate more than most, despite extraneous noise. Working in a newsroom is good training for that. So is having children. What about Aristotle’s generalization: “Talkative men seldom read.” I’m sympathetic to the idea but can’t prove it. I’m mentally reviewing the dedicated readers I’ve known (not much of a statistical sample) and all fit the thesis. They tend to be thoughtful, reflective types, sparing with words. (The late Harold Bloom would seem to have been an exception.) The garrulous are generally too busy talking to read (or listen). Of course, I try to avoid bloviators, though I work with several and have learned to deal with them via email whenever possible.

 

The reader/writer partnership is reciprocal, sometimes testy, sometimes trusting, not unlike friendship. Ideally, it’s rooted in mutual respect. Thus, a “silent conversation.” This can be true even of ephemeral reading – newspapers, popular fiction, blog posts. If you accept that the best reading is a form of conversation, what about writing? Consider Laurence Sterne’s suggestion at the start of Chapter XI in the second volume of Tristram Shandy:

 

“Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all; -- so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.”