The Inimitable Tiff

This skill, which I will call corroboration—distinct from conversation—is a useful one. Criticism is not the only context in which the lack of this middle leaves only the polar resorts of hostility or servility. Corroboration makes a pair with conversation, and is more than its match. Conversation has many prerequisites; corroboration is as possible as communication. Though I doubt it can be taught—for it requires just that broadness and attention and readiness to improvise which cannot be privately exercised—it is a skill that should be expected of the educated, for it is the skill that lets you talk to people as such, and saves the mind from having to spurn the human race in growing to serve it.

True, it edges on dishonesty. There is an urge to corroborate that can induce oversimplification and overconfidence; that, when you have something to contribute—when you are aware of something unknown to your interlocutor’s project or observation, yet relevant to it, whether bearing or simply confirming, compels you to speak. But common discretion will save you: when you open your mouth and say something stupid, the mistake is not being stupid—to be stupid is no more a mistake than to be young; the mistake is to open your mouth.