I imagine most of us--in class, at work, at professional meetings, even in volunteer organizations and churches--have had to sit through presentations by The Outside Consultant or expert who didn't really know what s/he was getting into and who finds him/herself in over his/her head.
Some of us surely have even found ourselves at the podium in this awkward situation--you do your best, you smile, you express your gratitude to the old friend who asked to travel to such an interesting locale, you try something clever from whatever you saw in that morning's local paper -- and then, in a serious tone, you summarize as carefully as you can everything you'v learned about the subject at hand since you got off the plane -- before steering your comments toward some analogous topic with which you are familiar.
If you're in the audience for a performance like this, you notice transition that gives away the speaker's game. It comes immediately after the summary of the subject at hand, when s/he segues toward that parallel tangent about which s/he hopes to know more than the audience. The dead-give-way clue is the tell-tale passive-voice transitional sentence shifting responsibility away from the speaker and toward the program organizers (often an old friend or colleague): "I was asked to address such-and-such….." At this point what the speaker is really saying (as we know who ever had to resort to these tricks) is: "Although I wish I could duck the whole thing, I'm stuck here at the podium and I'll give the performance my best shot. I will be as clever and faux-profound as I can be. I will try to tell entertaining stories from my own irrelevant experience -- but its not really my fault that I don't have anything significant to say about the announced subject of the workshop, conference, session, or whatever."
Sometimes these performances are brilliant and entertaining, sometimes they're awful, and often they are just white noise. When its over, however, savvy members of the audience may shrug their shoulders, roll their eyes, and head for the bar. And the speaker, having survived and perhaps even charmed the audience with wit and anecdote, is thinking the same thing-- "Finally its over, now where's the bar?"
I was reminded of these situations by the review of Volume Two of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography in the most recent issue (volume 110, 2002, no. 1) of the _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_ -- where a bright fellow from Texas gives the obligatory summary paragraph followed by the dead-give-way passive voice clue: "As research editor for the Texas State Historical Association's New Handbook of Texas, I was asked to review the book from the vantage point of . . . ." From the rest of his review I learned that his Handbook of Texas "took a significantly different approach, and as a result it contains football players, rock musicians, film actors, and air force generals who all, in some sense, reflect the state that shaped them."
OK, now where's the bar. I propose a toast to Sara B. Bearss, John T. Kneebone, J. Jefferson Looney, Brent Tarter, Sandra Gioia Treadway, and all the authors of biographies in Volume of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography for a job well done--and encourage them to keep up their solid and impressive work.
And I'd like to buy a drink for the gentleman from Texas, too! Sure, I'll admit that the review is almost completely irrelevant and entirely forgettable--shrug--but he made the effort and the result is glib and tolerably entertaining. Cheers. These literary qualities may work better from the podium than in print, but I'm eager to buy him the next round and hear an evening's worth of stories from the New Handbook of Texas -- secure in the knowledge that long after the performance has been forgotten and the bar has closed, we'll all be turning to the DVB with confidence for reliable information about Virginians.
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Jon Kukla ....................... Executive Vice-President
1250 Red Hill Road ........ Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation
Brookneal, VA 24528 .... www.redhill.org .... 434 376-2044
Home 434 376-4172 ...... Office email: [log in to unmask]
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