Conversation : A History of a Declining Art (Hardcover) by Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller gives us a celebration and elegy for the art of conversation. His work at once enlightens and saddens me, two effects that fuse into one."-Harold Bloom

Miller traces the history of conversation from Aristotle to the present day, focussing particularly on the eighteenth century. For him, the Paris salons where Diderot opined and the London coffeehouses where Dr. Johnson imbibed between aphorisms represent conversation's apogee. In America, he feels, it fared less well, even before the contemporary menace posed by the Internet, iPods, and the polarization of the political sphere. Thoreau dismissed conversation as a waste of time, and Melville thought it was a tool of con men. Miller defines conversation as the act of speaking with others without any objective other than enjoyment and exchange, and there is something conversational about his own style, which tends toward anecdote and ignores theoretical approaches that could have enriched his argument. Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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