Dear readers,
We all have our own literary love languages, the places behind the ears we like books to scratch. Fellow eavesdroppers, this newsletter is for you.
Nothing tanks my enjoyment of a novel quite like bad dialogue — stilted, unbelievable, unnecessary. It borders on authorial malpractice. But on the flip side: What a thrill to encounter nonpareil conversations in fiction, where all the voices are fully formed. Reading such exchanges is like watching the Apollonian ideal of a badminton match.
If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll be persuaded by no less than Barbara Walters. Her insanely idiosyncratic book “How to Talk With Practically Anybody About Practically Anything” has not aged especially well — it is from 1970, and as anachronistic as macramé — but she understood the timeless appeal of good dialogue: “Conversation can be such pleasure that it is criminal to exchange comments so stale that neither really listens.”
Co-sign, Barbara. And I promise, these books keep their shuttlecocks aloft.
—Joumana
“The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy,” by Evelyn Waugh
Fiction, 1948
You probably know Waugh for his novel “Brideshead Revisited,” or if you’re journalism-adjacent you’ve possibly read “Scoop,” or if you really have excellent taste you might cherish “Vile Bodies” as much as I do.
“The Loved One” isn’t as well known, but this novella is quintessential Waugh: outrageously funny, a satire that arrives like a javelin hurled from left field. It is also very, very weird.
The story follows a community of fairly ineffectual British expats in Los Angeles, and centers on a love triangle involving a funeral home aesthetician, her mortician boss and a rival embalmer — of animals.
I’m as skittish as the next maladjusted mortal about death, corpses, embalming fluids, coffins. And yet! I was howling on every other page. The premise is utterly absurd, sure, and Waugh packs a lot in: a lovelorn man called Mr. Joyboy, a pair of newspaper reporters writing a pseudonymous advice column, a madcap cover-up. (The 1965 film version — which, however improbably, features Liberace — deserves a mention in the DSM.)
But it’s the dialogue that sends the story into the extreme. Take this, as a sample:
“An open casket is all right for dogs and cats,” the animal embalmer (who is also a hack poet) explains to his love interest; but parrots “look absurd with the head on a pillow. … Who asked you to the funeral anyway? Were you acquainted with the late parrot?”
God, I’m laughing just retyping that.
Read if you like: Spy magazine, estate sales, “Fawlty Towers.”
Available from: A good library or used-book store, or online at Project Gutenberg Canada (where the book is in the public domain).
“Transactions in a Foreign Currency,” by Deborah Eisenberg
Fiction, 1986
Eisenberg got her start writing plays, as I learned from the flaps of this book, and it shows. The stories here are staged impeccably, with sharp, surprising turns, recounted party scenes and locker rooms you could practically walk into, phone calls you’d be lucky to have tomorrow.
The heart of the collection is Manhattan, beating in the chests of wry, occasionally self-defeating but reliably hilarious narrators. An entire story is given over to a woman trying to quit smoking who joins the Y — that’s the plot. It’s fantastic. (And apparently autobiographical.)
In “Rafe’s Coat,” the main character and her best friend — Rafe himself — have a private demotic that carries jealousy, affection and betrayal even in an otherwise benign discussion about moving a picture around a house. Discussing why they never had an affair:
“‘We’re too much alike, really, aren’t we? We’d climb into bed and I’d say, “Great sheets — where’d you get them?” Or I’d take off my clothes and you’d say, “Oh, fabulous — underwear with bison.” That sort of thing. We just really wouldn’t have been able to concentrate.’
“‘Underwear with bison?’ I said. ‘Really?’”
Tender, funny, quirky. Earlier in the same story, the narrator is on the phone with a terrific gossip, a useful contact who, repeating an insane bit of hearsay, counters, Does a pope defecate in the woods? (I still don’t exactly know what this means; I’m still intrigued.)
It’s worth tracking down this collection in its original form, though many of the stories were published in The New Yorker and later lassoed into Eisenberg’s “Collected Stories.” Personally, I’ve always found those career retrospectives a bit depressing; it’s often more satisfying to see stories “in real time” — a snapshot of an author’s mind at a particular point. Read aloud any of the smoker’s musings to someone trying to kick a habit and they’ll be running miles in no time.
Read if you like: human cooperatives, condominium drama, Gristedes.
Available from: This one seems to be out of print, but used copies are widely available online; or check your library.
Why don’t you …
Graze on “Talk,” Linda Rosenkrantz’s not-quite-novel, not-quite-transcription of the 1960s?
Marvel at Charles Portis’s command of the vernacular (even Donna Tartt agrees he’s fantastic)?
Dive into “Oreo,” Fran Ross’s singular (and, sadly, only) novel, which has deliriously inventive verbs?
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The post Can We Talk? The Characters in These 2 Books Can, and How appeared first on New York Times.