Word: zeldin
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...kitchens and media-entertainment rooms are encouraging family togetherness, while tony bedrooms pamper all. At my carpet business, I see customers opting for the more opulent shags of years past. Everyone is indulging in comfort. Instead of taking extravagant vacations, it's all about being cozy at home. JOE ZELDIN Calabasas, Calif...
...Each of Zeldin's chapters begins with a capsule biography of one or more individuals who in various ways embody contemporary concerns. These exemplars are usually women, because, more than men, Zeldin writes, they "seem to be looking at life with fresh eyes." For better or worse, most are also citizens or residents of France, a country that the author describes as his "laboratory...
These portraits introduce charmingly aphoristic essays filled with lively, unexpected detail (did you know that Andean peasants can identify 300 varieties of potato?). In the town of Cognac, which produces a world-famous, tongue-loosening brandy, Zeldin asked a housewife, With whom do you have your most useful talks? Her answer, "With my dog. He really understands me." This anecdote leads into Zeldin's discussion of conversation and of one of his heroes, Socrates. In an age when monologue was dominant-gods or kings lectured while common folk listened-Socrates developed the revolutionary notion of the dialogue. Another conversational revolutionary...
This is an example of what Zeldin believes conversation can do for all sorts of people, and he says real discourse has barely begun. The book provides ample evidence that most encounters between humans have been "missed opportunities." History, he notes, "has so far largely been a chronicle of ability gone to waste." Nonetheless, he believes that "the earth is in the early stages of being criss-crossed afresh by invisible threads, threads uniting individuals who differ by all conventional criteria but who are finding they have aspirations in common...
There is evidence, not cited in An Intimate History, that Zeldin may be onto something. Consider that new font of chatter known as E-mail. Here is a mode of talk that is raunchy as well as revelatory, clubby as well as all enveloping. Friendships as well as enmities between strangers are born on, and borne, by wire connecting one continent to another. Is the Internet the ultimate salon...