{"id":27149,"date":"2012-03-05T08:00:55","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T13:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=27149"},"modified":"2012-03-05T10:35:09","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T15:35:09","slug":"loose-lips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/05\/loose-lips\/","title":{"rendered":"Loose Lips"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one\u2019s back that are absolutely and entirely true.

\u2014Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em><\/H1><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I spent a recent Sunday morning at the baby shower of a friend made in adulthood. The other attendees all went back to Catholic school, so after the obligatory oohing and aahing over the onesies, conversation turned to Jessie, the surprising no-show of the high school crowd. \u201cShe must be hungover again,\u201d said one girl with a knowing shrug.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d another chimed in. \u201cScott must\u2019ve been on the late shift again, if you know what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snickering all around. \u201cUgh, Scott,\u201d one said with a theatrical shiver. \u201cThat guy is such<\/em> a loser, my God. If Jessie doesn\u2019t move on soon\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJessie will never<\/em> move on,\u201d another girl emphatically interrupted. \u201cShe finds his gigantic forty-year-old beer belly and pathological fear of commitment totally entrancing, and really who wouldn\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n

What followed was another ten minutes on the subject of the absent Jessie, who, at thirty-three, all agreed, was definitely way too old to keep answering the midnight booty calls of the ne\u2019er-do-well weeknight bartender at the Harp. Finally, the hostess noticed me nibbling quietly on my teacakes in the corner. \u201cOh, God, I am so sorry!\u201d she cried. \u201cI forgot that you don\u2019t know Jessie! This must be so boring to you\u2014we will change the subject.\u201d A pause. \u201cSo, um, what else should we talk about?\u201d She gazed down at her belly doubtfully.<\/p>\n

In the thudding silence that followed, I was allowed to insist that Jessie\u2019s sleazy sexual predilections and Scott\u2019s ironic collection of too-tight NASCAR T-shirts were infinitely more interesting than bump-circumference guessing games or the extortionate price of strollers these days. Several hours past the official end of the party, I left in the glow of new friendships made: it was truly the most fun I\u2019d had in weeks.<\/p>\n

Because that\u2019s the thing: gossip is<\/em> fun, one of the most profound and satisfying pleasures we humans are given. If Eleanor Roosevelt was right that \u201cgreat minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people,\u201d then count me among the 99 percent. I don\u2019t even care if I\u2019m unacquainted with the parties being dissected; if anything, total strangers make a purer sport of the conversation. I experience a similar frisson reading a Dear Prudence column as learning that my childhood dentist was once arrested as a Peeping Tom (fact!).<\/p>\n

Several writers have weighed in recently on this age-old human foible that is gossip, with varying levels of success. In The Virtues of Our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness, and Other Bad Habits<\/em><\/a>, philosopher Emrys Westacott examines the ethics of several conventionally frowned-upon social transgressions and \u201cmoral failings\u201d like rudeness, snobbery, and, of course, gossip. He begins his examination of the subject by posing the big-picture questions: Should we condemn all gossip? If gossip isn\u2019t an \u201cinherently pejorative\u201d act, can it ever be acceptable or even beneficial?<\/p>\n

Westacott finds compelling ethical justifications for the innocent pleasure so many of us take in slamming our friends and loved ones. Yes, when it\u2019s malicious and untrue, he allows, gossip can ruin reputations and damage lives. But the right<\/em> kind of gossip\u2014about, say, unwarranted salary discrepancies, or sketchy undisclosed conflicts of interest\u2014can be a force of good. Behind-the-scenes murmurings build relationships, provide emotional catharsis, counteract secrecy, and upend existing power structures, to name just a few benefits. In the end, Westacott concludes, \u201ca willingness to talk about people\u2014which at times will involve gossiping\u2014may be an integral part of the \u2018examined life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Another recent book, Joseph Epstein\u2019s Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit<\/em><\/a>, takes Westacott\u2019s claim that there\u2019s no such thing as \u201cno one else\u2019s business\u201d to new heights\u2014and depths. The extended essay takes as a given that \u201c[o]ther people are the world\u2019s most fascinating subject,\u201d which I for one certainly wouldn\u2019t dispute. From there Epstein veers back and forth between disquisitions on the meaning, importance, and history of gossip to delectable tidbits on everyone from Arthur Miller (who dumped his disabled child in an institution for life!) to Fidel Castro (who did it with Kenneth Tynan\u2019s wife!).<\/p>\n

But Epstein\u2019s anecdotes are marred by an old-man-on-his-sinking-porch crankiness that\u2019s especially evident in his disparaging of the modern cult of celebrity, a section rife with declarations along the lines of \u201cI care a lot less for gossip about Conan O\u2019Brien than I do for gossip about Conor Cruise O\u2019Brien.\u201d Yes, well, so? \u201cToday\u2019s Hollywood stars, rock musicians, and comedians,\u201d Epstein decides, \u201cno longer generate the intense interest that older movie stars once did.\u201d Tell that to the Bravo programmers. Perhaps it\u2019s equally accurate to say that Epstein<\/em> doesn\u2019t have the same intense interest in today\u2019s stars.<\/p>\n

Gossip delights Epstein\u2014unless, it seems, a certain sort of woman is the one purveying it. In Epstein\u2019s view, Barbara Walters\u2014\u201cthe nation\u2019s therapist, our Barbara\u201d\u2014is a vindictive, petty, dignity-trampling lightweight who lives and dies by ratings. Tina Brown fares even worse: possessed of \u201creally quite charming ability to pump up sugar daddies,\u201d she launched her career by \u201cbonking her way up the food chain of Oxford celebrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the choice, I\u2019d rather just read a good novel than wade through Epstein\u2019s treatise. Because, at the end of the day, aren\u2019t all novels, or the good ones at least, a rarefied form of gossip? Ian McEwan called novels the \u201chigher gossip,\u201d and indeed, what would Persuasion <\/em>or Anna Karenina <\/em>or Middlemarch <\/em>or basically any great nineteenth-century novel be without the chattering of tongues?<\/p>\n

Which brings us to Beth Gutcheon\u2019s Gossip<\/em><\/a>, out this month. The title is rather misleading, or too broad to excite much interest; it\u2019s a bit like calling a novel Food<\/em> or People Having Sex<\/em>. But Gutcheon has a more specific meaning in mind, which she spells out early in the novel:<\/p>\n

\n

Did you know that the origin of the word gossip in English is \u2018god-sibling\u2019? It\u2019s the talk between people who are godparents to the same child, people who have a legitimate loving interest in the person they talk about. It’s talk that weaves a net of support and connection beneath the people you want to protect.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Epstein offers an his alternative etymology for this word, which he says could also refer to General George Washington\u2019s \u201cinstructions during the revolution to \u2018go sip\u2019 with the enemy in taverns and learn what their military plans are.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Gossip<\/em> charts a series of complicated multigenerational entanglements centered around Lovie French, proprietor of a high-end Upper East Side boutique and longtime mistress of an older married man. Gutcheon reveals this central fact of her protagonist\u2019s biography with tantalizing obliqueness, focusing instead on Lovie\u2019s decades-long friendships with Dinah and Avis, two boarding-school friends who have nothing in common except Lovie\u2014nothing, that is, until their children fall in love and Lovie finds herself at the center of an unexpectedly sordid mess. While its denouement ultimately falls on the wrong side of improbable, for the most part Gossip<\/em> is as undemanding and enjoyable as a long jaw with an old friend about a former classmate\u2019s repulsive, record-breaking weight gain.<\/p>\n

Speaking of weight gain: if you ever find yourself amid the Austro-Hungarian grandeur of Lviv, Ukraine, do yourself a favor and duck into Tasty Gossip, a faux-dive that serves up flawless verenikis and has one of the most memorably hilarious names ever. It isn\u2019t all in jest, though. The more I think and read about gossip\u2014the more elaborate the dissections and the enactments and the defenses\u2014the more convinced I became of its inevitability and even necessity. \u201cTasty Gossip,\u201d unlike so many other English appropriations I\u2019ve known and loved, actually gets to a basic truth: there\u2019s nothing quite so delicious, or so deeply human, as talking shit about other people.<\/p>\n

Laura Moser is a writer living in Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one\u2019s back that are absolutely and entirely true. \u2014Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray I spent a recent Sunday morning at the baby shower of a friend made in adulthood. The other attendees all went back to Catholic school, 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