Private Conversations in Public
Mark Twain and Public Speaking: How does a rehearsed speech appear spontaneous?
Teatro Massimo, Palermo 2018
You can track the frequency of Mark Twain’s public speeches with the increase of his debts. Even though he adored his celebrity status—and was perhaps the first American celebrity—his arduous schedule of public events mainly served to help recoup losses from his many wayward financial schemes. In his later years, he took to the stage with reluctance, still forcing himself, however, to fashion his performances into art.
Like many another well-intentioned man, I have made too many speeches. And like other transgressors of this sort, I have from time to time reformed, binding myself, by oath, on New Year’s Day, to never make another speech.
Because he savored cheers and acclaim, that was an implausible oath; and once those cravings were combined with his growing debts, a break was all but certain. While financial strain wasn’t ideal for Twain, we can be thankful for what it leaves us, in the record of his speeches, but also in his descriptions of public speaking. And we can gleam—albeit, indirectly—in both his fiction and essays how he approached a stage. With those examples comes the complexity of how the delivery of a speech affects the meaning of a speech.
There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory.
Because it’s Twain, one eyebrow is always raised, and one must be guarded for the coming smirk. Twain perfected the art of misstating what you supposed he meant in service of a much better truth: remember that the knowing fool is typically the wisest one. The line excerpted above comes from his fiction, a 1899 story, The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg. What’s notable is how it appears to wink, this time, right back at its author.
In his many grand tours of city after city, stage after stage, Twain refined his speeches, making an intricate dance out of his deceptively simple tales, where, for instance, “a touch of indifferent grammar flung in here and there, apparently at random, has a good effect.” Even with endless repetitions, his tales still sounded by all accounts lively, full of exaggeration and adventure and humor, in what would today be called stand-up rather than drama. So how does a timeworn speech appear impromptu?
…the best and most telling speech is not the actual impromptu one, but the counterfeit of it; [the audience knows] that the speech is most worth listening to which has been carefully prepared in private and tried on a plaster cast, or an empty chair, or any other appreciative object that will keep quiet until the speaker has got his matter and his delivery limbered up so that they will seem impromptu to an audience.
The previous two excerpts come from what he labeled an after-dinner speech from approximately 1884, although, once again, Twain’s tongue has burrowed quite deep into his cheek. Looking for a firm spot where the fiction ends and Twain begins is, however, always an error. A more interesting question about his public speeches might focus on what made them so compelling. Beyond the literary aspect, or the entertainment of a good performance, audiences were by all accounts rapt in a way previously unknown.
One hint might come from an old trick of public speaking which a good writer might intuit. Rather than directing your voice aimlessly, you speak to a specific person in the audience. If you’re standing on a stage like Twain, you spot a specific individual and speak to that person, holding your eye contact. Part of the utility is psychological: it centers your attention, and it enables you to forget the large, amorphous crowd in the room, which is most certainly judging you. After a few moments, perhaps a sentence or three, you shift your focus to another individual. You’ll appear composed, your words will be a tad more conversational, and this concentration, paradoxically, will feel more intimate. For Twain’s audience, stuck in a large hall and packed beyond comfort, his performance still felt like a personal address. Audiences didn’t walk away believing he was some distant, unknowable figure, and these reactions further propelled his celebrity. The setting felt intimate, personal, more like a conversation than a speech.
And this is akin to how nearly all readers believe at least one book was ‘written for’ them. The pages speak in some elusive, indescribable way, which shapes the narrative into a personal letter. How is this achieved? By the writer addressing each line to a particular reader. If the key for oratory is to focus on individuals, the analogous key for writing, in fact, doesn’t change: one way to avoid rudderless, aimless sentences is to direct your lines to a particular person. To write for everybody—the opposite method—is a sure way to toss out stale, bland, and tedious sentences. Twain tackled all the subjects of his day, book after book, speech after speech, in the style of a personal address. Readers felt winked at. Viewers saw his smirk. It’s the reason why more than one hundred years after his death his appearance and manner and even the cadence of his voice remains vivid.
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