In his interesting review of what may or may not be such an interesting book (”Conversation: A History of a Declining Art,” by Stephen Miller) Benjamin Lytal leans heavily on Bob Dylan’s parrying with journalists as one example of the verbal arts. From today’s New York Sun

In his December 1965 Los Angeles press conference, Bob Dylan was asked flat-footed questions: “You kinda mumble, you sort of slur,” one reporter began, his mid-Atlantic tone fresh and confident: “Sinatra [...] was complaining also about the new modern singers, about enunciation and diction and so forth.”

“The new modern singers are much too sick, nowadays,” Mr. Dylan replied, cheerfully taciturn. “I have a nervous disease,” he elaborated.

“Just what kind of singer are you?” asked another newspapermen.

“A mathematical singer,” Mr. Dylan answered.

Stephen Miller, author of “Conversation: A History of a Declining Art” (Yale University Press, 336 pages, $27.50), would have mixed feelings about Mr. Dylan’s exchanges. Mr. Miller regrets 1960s slang as spoken by Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider” - “using ‘man’ all the time and speaking in sentence fragments.” Mr. Dylan’s mumbling beats Mr. Hopper’s drawl. On the other hand, Mr. Miller champions “raillery,” a kind of elevated repartee. “To railly well,” he quotes Henry Fielding as saying,”it is absolutely necessary that Kindness must run thro’ all you say.” Mr. Dylan doesn’t like the reporters’ questions, but he’s giving them a good time.

Mr. Dylan fits Mr. Miller’s definition of the “railleur” as one who “enjoys ribbing others and takes no offense at being ribbed.” But Mr. Dylan’s raillery stakes out the gap between his reticent intuition and the journalist’s merely verbal interests. The dialogue recalls Thoreau: “It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they understand you.”

As a blogger, RWB qualifies as a harbinger of what Mr. Miller apparently anticipates as a future of “angry narcissists.”

Well, bully for him, the lousy snob. Now I can go back to reading through some of my old posts. They’re just so damned good!

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