![]() ![]() Whatever the case, all too often we forget to consider the art of conversation. Perhaps we do better in a crowd, working our way around the room from person to person without having to engage anyone except on a surface level. Perhaps we do just fine when talking one-on-one with a friend, but clam up when we find ourselves at a wedding where half the guests are strangers to us. ![]() Regarding conversation, most of us probably find ourselves in the middle of these two extremes. ![]() In his book of essays, “Wind-Sprints,” Joseph Epstein recounts an incident from the life of John Keats when the poet took a two-mile walk with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “one of the famous talkers of his day.” In a letter to his brother, Keats wrote: “I heard his voice as he came toward me-I heard it as he moved away-I heard it all the interval-if it may be called so.” In “Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book,” Walker Percy writes, “Johnny Carson, when questioned about his aplomb on the stage before a TV audience of millions, replied: ‘Sure, I’m at ease up there-because I’m in control-but when I’m at a cocktail party and caught in a one-on-one conversation: panic city!’” ![]()
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