CAN WE TALK?IN THIS ERA OF CELL YELL, "OVER-SHARING," AND PANDEMIC GOSSIP, CULTURED CONVERSATION IS A LOST ART. WILLIAM NORWICH CALLS FOR THE RETURN OF THE SOPHISTICATED SOCIAL EXCHANGE. Vogue October 2006
Copyright 2006 The Conde Nast Publications Inc. All Rights Reserved

October 2006




CAN WE TALK?IN THIS ERA OF CELL YELL, "OVER-SHARING," AND PANDEMIC GOSSIP, CULTURED CONVERSATION IS A LOST ART. WILLIAM NORWICH CALLS FOR THE RETURN OF THE SOPHISTICATED SOCIAL EXCHANGE. Vogue October 2006

Copyright 2006 The Conde Nast Publications Inc.All Rights Reserved Vogue
October 2006
SECTION: CAN WE TALK?; TALKING FASHION NORWICH NOTES; Pg. 216 Vol. 196 No. 10LENGTH: 1101 wordsHEADLINE: CAN WE TALK?IN THIS ERA OF CELL YELL, "OVER-SHARING," AND PANDEMIC GOSSIP, CULTURED CONVERSATION IS A LOST ART. WILLIAM NORWICH CALLS FOR THE RETURN OF THE SOPHISTICATED SOCIAL EXCHANGE.BYLINE: WILLIAM NORWICH, Contributing EditorBODY:According to the latest anecdotal research (mine), many of this column's constituents are of the opinion that the art of conversation is endangered.Is it? Well, it depends whom you talk to."Can you believe they are still talking about the same thing?" asked the lady to my right at dinner in the country not long ago. "What are they talking about? I can't actually hear them," I responded.At a long table of about 30, the four guests in the lady's immediate vicinity, from the main course now into dessert, were discussing a media heiress they did not know well, and her new beau, a businessman with apparently dubious intentions."They are gossiping, not conversing," my dinner companion opined. "There's a world of difference, but no one has a clue what it is!"Certainly, the sort of sociability and discourse at the height of civilized salon life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-beautifully chronicled in Benedetta Craveri's book The Age of Conversation-is long gone. So, too, the sort of glamorous exchanges Katharine Hepburn described in her autobiography, Me, during dinner parties at director George Cukor's house on an evening, say, seated between Groucho Marx and Igor Stravinsky and talking about the lyrebirds in Australia."The secret of great conversation," nightlife impresario Amy Sacco said at a Barneys New York book party for Cocktails, her glittering guide to imbibing just published by Assouline, "is to listen. If you listen, people are fascinated by you!"But does an Edith Wharton novel or Emily Post need to fall on people's heads to remind us how to speak engagingly but also politely, respectful of certain boundaries? The culprit is the near complete blurring today of the public and the private realms. Just the babble alone of people yelling down their cell phones on the bus to work day after day, every expletive detail from sex lives to breakfast cereals, corrodes the ear. . . . How could we know the difference anymore between discourse and gossip?"The question I always get at dinner parties and am never sure how to respond to," said Heather Mnuchin at a recent ChloE event at Saks Fifth Avenue in Southampton, New York, "is people who, having asked me if I have children-and I have told them, yes, I have twins-then ask me if I took fertility drugs."Although she deflects the question with the greatest of ease, personal questions without a context are a conversational downer. Cristina Greeven Cuomo, the publisher of Gotham magazine and the wife of ABC News reporter Chris Cuomo, laughed. "The one that got me was even a couple of months after either of my two children were born, being asked, 'When is the baby due?'_"At a dinner party Nina Griscom and Leonel Piriano gave that same night on Long Island (for, among friends, Vera Wang and Arthur Becker, Elizabeth Lindemann and Todd Meister, Tory Burch, and Marjorie Gubelmann Raein), Anne Hearst, recently engaged to author Jay McInerney, told this story: Hearst's spacious East End house was designed by architect Peter Cook, the estranged husband of Christie Brinkley, and since the project was still ongoing, she was receiving many unsolicited questions about Cook. "People I don't even know are asking me what I think," Hearst said. " 'Think of what?' I answer." Think of the state of affairs of the Brinkley-Cook marriage, a story that was frosting every tabloid front page, what else? " 'I think it is none of my business,' " Hearst enjoys replying.If you are at dinner, a cocktail party, Bungalow 8, in London at a party at the Serpentine Gallery or Jemima Goldsmith's, anyplace, and you are asked something personal you don't want to talk about-losing a job, your health, family, the death of a loved one, why you are not drinking alcohol that evening, the end of an affair, a facelift, or something confidential involving a friend-the secret is to have a quick, amusing riposte ready that makes the questioner responsible for your reticence, not you. "Are you referring to the queen?" Princess Margaret reportedly would say if someone asked about "your sister."Nicole Kidman is very good at dealing with invasions of personal space, too. She once stopped on the red carpet to chastise a photographer who hurt her feelings yelling something unpleasant, telling him, "You're very rude!" And, famously, she employed humor to economically curtail any further questions when, on air, David Letterman asked her how she was doing after her split with Tom Cruise. "Well, I can wear heels now," she smiled, and said no more.At Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld's East Hampton house, setting for a fund-raising supper for the 2006 Baby Buggy Infant Gear Fund, an initiative that will help Baby Buggy keep up with the increasing needs of its many clients, people were talking about talking. (Among others, Sarah Jessica Parker, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Bruce Bozzi, Jr., whose family co-owns the Palm restaurants, Bravo television's Andy Cohen, and designer Narciso Rodriguez attended the party, underwritten by Gucci. All the money raised went right to the charity.)I told this story: I had been to a social gathering earlier, where I was asked by a near stranger-as I often was this summer-about a cartoon-type entertainment in the public eye involving a very dear friend, a document, in my personal opinion, that sadly reveals more about its audience's needs than the subject it lampoons.An award-winning journalist had asked me my assessment of the veracity of the caricature of my friend. As I did not know the man well, or the other guests at this particular event, a luncheon, I said quietly that the topic was personal for me and proceeded to change the subject, asking him about his summer."Oh, come on!" the man blasted me loudly. "You have to respond; it is in the public domain."I responded by telling him what I thought of his public domain. But was I wrong?"Nothing is off-limits or too personal except when people ask me what my husband's opinion is: 'What's going on in the Mideast?' I answer, 'You are talking to the wrong person. Ask him,'_" said writer-comedienne Alexandra Wentworth at the Seinfelds'.I asked Wentworth's husband, George Stephanopoulos, if he ever tired of being asked at dinner parties for his informed take on current events."No, I am flattered that people would care to know what I think," Stephanopoulos said.I asked if he uses his considerable interview skills to draw out a dull or shy dinner companion."No, I don't," he laughed. "I am supposed to make people uncomfortable when I interview them."And that's just the opposite of what you are meant to do at dinner. Please.GRAPHIC: the chattering classesHAS CONVERSATION BEEN DUMBED DOWN? left: ALEX KATZ'S THE COCKTAIL PARTY, 1965.LEND AN EARnightclub queen AMY SACCO AIMSTO ALWAYS BE A GOOD LISTENER.who: TINSLEY MORTIMERwhere: BARNEYs NEW YORKwore: VINTAGEtalking about: Amy sacco's NEW BOOK, cocktailswho: aatish taseer, lady gabriella windsor, and lord frederick windsorwhere: hyde parktalking about: RAISING FUNDS FOR THE serpentine GALLERYPEOPLE WILL TALKSUMMER AT the serpentine. below: ANOUCK LEPERE (IN sophia kokosalaki) with JEFFERSON HACK.taTtle talesACTRESS Kristin Scott ThomaS IN YSL (designed by Stefano pilati, host of the serpentine party).THE salonbenedetta craveri's account of A bygone ERA OF INTELLECTUAL ENGAGEMENT.who: Alexandra wentworth, jessica seinfeld (in gucci),and sarah jessica parkerwhere: the seinfelds' PLACE IN east hamptoNtalking about: baby buggy'Sinfant-gear driveClockwise from top: The Cocktail Party, 1965 (c) Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY; SANDRA HAMBURG; DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS/WireImage.com.