Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART ONE OPENING THE CONVERSATION
- PART TWO HOLMES IN THE CONVERSATION OF HIS CULTURE
- 2 “TO CHANGE THE ORDER OF CONVERSATION”: interruption and vocal diversity in Holmes' American talk
- 3 “COLLISIONS OF DISCOURSE” I: THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF CONVERSATION A carnival of verbal fireworks
- 4 “COLLISIONS OF DISCOURSE” II: ELECTRIC AND OCEANIC “CURRENTS” IN CONVERSATION The cultural work of Holmesian talk
- 5 A CONVERSATIONAL APPROACH TO TRUTH: the Doctor in dialogue with contemporary truth-sayers
- 6 CONVERSATION AND “THERAPEUTIC NIHILISM”: the Doctor in dialogue with contemporary medicine
- 7 THE SELF IN CONVERSATION: the Doctor in dialogue with contemporary psychology
- PART THREE THE TWO POLES OF CONVERSATION
- PART FOUR CLOSING THE CONVERSATION
- Notes
- Index
5 - A CONVERSATIONAL APPROACH TO TRUTH: the Doctor in dialogue with contemporary truth-sayers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART ONE OPENING THE CONVERSATION
- PART TWO HOLMES IN THE CONVERSATION OF HIS CULTURE
- 2 “TO CHANGE THE ORDER OF CONVERSATION”: interruption and vocal diversity in Holmes' American talk
- 3 “COLLISIONS OF DISCOURSE” I: THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF CONVERSATION A carnival of verbal fireworks
- 4 “COLLISIONS OF DISCOURSE” II: ELECTRIC AND OCEANIC “CURRENTS” IN CONVERSATION The cultural work of Holmesian talk
- 5 A CONVERSATIONAL APPROACH TO TRUTH: the Doctor in dialogue with contemporary truth-sayers
- 6 CONVERSATION AND “THERAPEUTIC NIHILISM”: the Doctor in dialogue with contemporary medicine
- 7 THE SELF IN CONVERSATION: the Doctor in dialogue with contemporary psychology
- PART THREE THE TWO POLES OF CONVERSATION
- PART FOUR CLOSING THE CONVERSATION
- Notes
- Index
Summary
[This truly intellectual banquet] … calls upon Truth, majestic virgin! to get down from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and take a festive garland and the vacant place on the medius lectus, – that carnival-shower of questions and replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the mahogany like bombshells from professional mortars, and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored fire, and the mischief-making rain of bon-bons pelting everybody that shows himself.
Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-TableSome persons seem to think that absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propositions, is all that conversation admits … [But] conversation must have its partial truths, its embellished truths, its exaggerated truths … One man who is a little too literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of esprit.
Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-TableReports of the Doctor's social talk, then, keep returning to this basic mystery: finally, we wonder, with Emerson, how did Holmes achieve this special balance? How was he able to draw people out into explosions that illuminate – without also sparking more destructive fires?
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- Chapter
- Information
- Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Culture of Conversation , pp. 127 - 160Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001