Dialogue

This had been my own policy for some years, and I often tended to choose the sort of volume Miss Kenton had found me reading that evening simply because such works tend to be written in good English, with plenty of elegant dialogue of much practical value to me.

The perpetual commendations of the lady either on his handwriting, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect unconcern with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in unison with her opinion of each.

Dolby sound blared out at them from the Convention Hall's sixteen speakers, sometimes so loud it was hard to hear the dialogue (what dialogue there was) .

The Jew saw that it would be hopeless to affect any further mistake regarding the reality of Miss Nancy's rage; and, shrinking involuntarily back a few paces, cast a glance, half imploring and half cowardly, at Sikes: as if to hint that he was the fittest person to pursue the dialogue.

); Mandragola , prose comedy in five acts, with prologue in verse, 1513; Della lingua (dialogue), 1514; Clizia , comedy in prose, 1515 (?

Do you want to hear my pathetic story?" He spat at the camera and a missile of spit splattered over the lens and dribbled down. Baby Kochamma was in her room, sitting up in bed, filling in a Listerine discount coupon that offered a two-rupee rebate on their new 500m1 bottle and two-thousand-rupee gift vouchers to the Lucky Winners of their lottery. Giant shadows of small insects swooped along the walls and ceiling. To get rid of them Baby Kochamma had put out the lights and lit a large candle in a tub of water. The water was already thick with singed carcasses. The candlelight accentuated her rouged cheeks and painted mouth. Her mascara was smudged. Her jewelry gleamed. She tilted the coupon towards the candle. Which brand of mouthwash do you usually use? Listerine, Baby Kochamma wrote in a hand grown spidery with age. State the reasons for your preference: She didn't hesitate. Tangy Taste. Fresh Breath. She had learned the smart, snappy language of television commercials. She filled in her name and lied about her age. Under Occupation: she wrote, Ornamental Gardening (Dip) Roch. U.S.A. She put the coupon into an envelope marked RELIABLE MEDICOS, KOTTAYAM. It would go with Kochu Maria in the morning, when she went into town on her Bestbakery cream-bun expedition. Baby Kochamma picked up her maroon diary, which came with its own pen. She turned to 19 June and made a fresh entry. Her manner was routine. She wrote: I lovc you I love you. Every page in the diary had an identical entry. She had a case full of diaries with identical entries. Some said more than just that. Some had the day's accounts, To-do lists, snatches of favorite dialogue from favorite soaps. But even these entries all began with the same words: I love you I love you . Father Mulligan had died four years ago of viral hepatitis, in an ashram north of Rishikesh. His years of contemplation of Hindu scriptures had led initially to theological curiosity, but eventually to a change of faith. Fifteen years ago, Father Mulligan became a Vaishnavite. A devotee of Lord Vishnu. He stayed in touch with Baby Kochamma even after he joined the ashram. He wrote to her every Diwali and sent her a greeting card every New Year. A few years ago he sent her a photograph of himself addressing a gathering of middle-class Punjabi widows at a spiritual camp. The women were all in white with their sari palloos drawn over their heads. Father Mulligan was in saffron. A yolk addressing a sea of boiled eggs. His white beard and hair were long, but combed and groomed. A saffron Santa with votive ash on his forehead. Baby Kochamma couldn't believe it. It was the only thing he ever sent her that she hadn't kept She was offended by the fact that he had actually, eventually, renounced his vows, but not for her. For other vows. It was like welcoming someone with open arms, only to have him walk straight past into someone else's. Father Mulligan's death did not alter the text of the entries in Baby Kochamma's diary, simply because as far as she was concerned it did not alter his availability. If anything, she possessed him in death in a way that she never had while he was alive. At least her memory of him was hers. Wholly hers. Savagely, fiercely, hers. Not to be shared with Faith, far less with competing co-nuns, and cosadhus or whatever it was they called themselves. Co-swamis. His rejection of her in life (gentle and compassionate though it was) was neutralized by death. In her memory of him, he embraced her. Just her. In the way a man embraces a woman. Once he was dead, Baby Kochamma stripped Father Mulligan of his ridiculous saffron robes and re-clothed him in the Coca-Cola cassock she so loved. (Her senses feasted, between changes, on that lean, concave, Christlike body.) She snatched away his begging bowl, pedicured his horny Hindu soles and gave him back his comfortable sandals. She re-converted him into the high-stepping camel that came to lunch on Thursdays. And every night, night after night, year after year, in diary after diary after diary, she wrote: I love you I love you . She put the pen back into the pen-loop and shut the diary. She took off her glasses, dislodged her dentures with her tongue, severing the strands of saliva that attached them to her gums like the sagging strings of a harp, and dropped them into a glass of Listerine. They sank to the bottom and sent up little bubbles, like prayers. Her nightcap. A clenched-smile soda. Tangy teeth in the morning. Baby Kochamma settled back on her pillow and waited to hear Rahel come out of Estha's room. They had begun to make her uneasy, both of them. A few mornings ago she had opened her window (for a Breath of Fresh Air) and caught them red-handed in the act of Returning From Somewhere. Clearly they had spent the whole night out. Together. Where could they have been? What and how much did they remember? When would they leave? What were they doing, sitting together in the dark for so long? She fell asleep propped up against her pillows, thinking that perhaps, over the sound of the rain and the television, she hadn't heard Estha's door open. That Rahel had gone to bed long ago. She hadn't Rahel was lying on Estha's bed. She looked thinner lying down. Younger. Smaller. Her face was turned towards the window beside the bed. Slanting rain hit the bars of the window-grill and shattered into a line spray over her face and her smooth bare arm. Her soft, sleeveless T-shirt was a glowing yellow in the dark. The bottom half of her, in blue jeans, melted into the darkness. It was a little cold. A little wet. A little quiet. The Air. But what was there to say? From where he sat, at the end of the bed, Estha, without turning his head, could see her. Faintly outlined. The sharp line of her jaw. Her collarbones like wings that spread from the base of her throat to the ends of her shoulders. A bird held down by skin. She turned her head and looked at him. He sat very straight. Waiting for the inspection. He had finished the ironing. She was lovely to him. Her hair. Her cheeks. Her small, cleverlooking hands. His sister. A nagging sound started up in his head. The sound of passing trains. The light and shade and light and shade that falls on you if you have a window seat. He sat even straighter. Still, he could see her. Grown into their mother's skin. The liquid glint of her eyes in the dark. Her small straight nose. Her mouth, full-lipped. Something wounded-looking about it. As though it was flinching from something. As though long ago someone—a man with rings—had hit her across it. A beautiful, hurt mouth. Their beautiful mother's mouth, Estha thought. Ammu's mouth. That had kissed his hand through the barred train window. First class, on the Madras Mail to Madras. "Bye, Estha.

The dialogue could still be recognizable as a dope deal.

It was their eternal daily dialogue.

Without appearing to have heard the dialogue, of which she had not lost a word, she began again, giving to her voice all the charm, all the power, all the seduction the demon had bestowed upon it: "For all my tears, my cares, My exile, and my chains, I have my youth, my prayers, And God, who counts my pains."

Zara replied, and, after a musical dialogue, consented to fly.

Probably the ministry is about to undergo a change." A pile of Cassandras, Harlequins and Columbines, jolted along high above the passersby, all possible grotesquenesses, from the Turk to the savage, Hercules supporting Marquises, fishwives who would have made Rabelais stop up his ears just as the Maenads made Aristophanes drop his eyes, tow wigs, pink tights, dandified hats, spectacles of a grimacer, three-cornered hats of Janot tormented with a butterfly, shouts directed at pedestrians, fists on hips, bold attitudes, bare shoulders, immodesty unchained; a chaos of shamelessness driven by a coachman crowned with flowers; this is what that institution was like. Greece stood in need of the chariot of Thespis, France stands in need of the hackney-coach of Vadé. Everything can be parodied, even parody. The Saturnalia, that grimace of antique beauty, ends, through exaggeration after exaggeration, in Shrove Tuesday; and the Bacchanal, formerly crowned with sprays of vine leaves and grapes, inundated with sunshine, displaying her marble breast in a divine semi-nudity, having at the present day lost her shape under the soaked rags of the North, has finally come to be called the Jack-pudding. The tradition of carriage-loads of maskers runs back to the most ancient days of the monarchy. The accounts of Louis XI allot to the bailiff of the palace "twenty sous, Tournois, for three coaches of mascarades in the crossroads." In our day, these noisy heaps of creatures are accustomed to have themselves driven in some ancient cuckoo carriage, whose imperial they load down, or they overwhelm a hired landau, with its top thrown back, with their tumultuous groups. Twenty of them ride in a carriage intended for six. They cling to the seats, to the rumble, on the cheeks of the hood, on the shafts. They even bestride the carriage lamps. They stand, sit, lie, with their knees drawn up in a knot, and their legs hanging. The women sit on the men's laps. Far away, above the throng of heads, their wild pyramid is visible. These carriage-loads form mountains of mirth in the midst of the rout. Collé, Panard and Piron flow from it, enriched with slang. This carriage which has become colossal through its freight, has an air of conquest. Uproar reigns in front, tumult behind. People vociferate, shout, howl, there they break forth and writhe with enjoyment; gayety roars; sarcasm flames forth, joviality is flaunted like a red flag; two jades there drag farce blossomed forth into an apotheosis; it is the triumphal car of laughter. A laughter that is too cynical to be frank. In truth, this laughter is suspicious. This laughter has a mission. It is charged with proving the Carnival to the Parisians. These fishwife vehicles, in which one feels one knows not what shadows, set the philosopher to thinking. There is government therein. There one lays one's finger on a mysterious affinity between public men and public women. It certainly is sad that turpitude heaped up should give a sum total of gayety, that by piling ignominy upon opprobrium the people should be enticed, that the system of spying, and serving as caryatids to prostitution should amuse the rabble when it confronts them, that the crowd loves to behold that monstrous living pile of tinsel rags, half dung, half light, roll by on four wheels howling and laughing, that they should clap their hands at this glory composed of all shames, that there would be no festival for the populace, did not the police promenade in their midst these sorts of twenty-headed hydras of joy. But what can be done about it? These be-ribboned and be-flowered tumbrils of mire are insulted and pardoned by the laughter of the public. The laughter of all is the accomplice of universal degradation. Certain unhealthy festivals disaggregate the people and convert them into the populace. And populaces, like tyrants, require buffoons. The King has Roquelaure, the populace has the Merry-Andrew. Paris is a great, mad city on every occasion that it is a great sublime city. There the Carnival forms part of politics. Paris—let us confess it—willingly allows infamy to furnish it with comedy. She only demands of her masters—when she has masters—one thing: "Paint me the mud." Rome was of the same mind. She loved Nero. Nero was a titanic lighterman. Chance ordained, as we have just said, that one of these shapeless clusters of masked men and women, dragged about on a vast calash, should halt on the left of the boulevard, while the wedding train halted on the right. The carriage-load of masks caught sight of the wedding carriage containing the bridal party opposite them on the other side of the boulevard. "Hullo!" said a masker, "here's a wedding." "A sham wedding," retorted another. "We are the genuine article." And, being too far off to accost the wedding party, and fearing also, the rebuke of the police, the two maskers turned their eyes elsewhere. At the end of another minute, the carriage-load of maskers had their hands full, the multitude set to yelling, which is the crowd's caress to masquerades; and the two maskers who had just spoken had to face the throng with their comrades, and did not find the entire repertory of projectiles of the fishmarkets too extensive to retort to the enormous verbal attacks of the populace. A frightful exchange of metaphors took place between the maskers and the crowd. In the meanwhile, two other maskers in the same carriage, a Spaniard with an enormous nose, an elderly air, and huge black moustache, and a gaunt fishwife, who was quite a young girl, masked with a loup , 110 had also noticed the wedding, and while their companions and the passersby were exchanging insults, they had held a dialogue in a low voice. Their aside was covered by the tumult and was lost in it. The gusts of rain had drenched the front of the vehicle, which was wide open; the breezes of February are not warm; as the fishwife, clad in a low-necked gown, replied to the Spaniard, she shivered, laughed and coughed. Here is their dialogue: "Say, now." "What, daddy?" "Do you see that old cove?" "What old cove?" "Yonder, in the first wedding-cart, on our side." "The one with his arm hung up in a black cravat?" "Yes." "Well?" "I'm sure that I know him." "Ah!" "I'm willing that they should cut my throat, and I'm ready to swear that I never said either you, thou, or I, in my life, if I don't know that Parisian." 111 "Paris in Pantin today." "Can you see the bride if you stoop down?" "No." "And the bridegroom?" "There's no bridegroom in that trap." "Bah!" "Unless it's the old fellow." "Try to get a sight of the bride by stooping very low." "I can't." "Never mind, that old cove who has something the matter with his paw I know, and that I'm positive." "And what good does it do to know him?" "No one can tell.

Did we really?"] Lachesis, very softly: [We told you so, didn't we? For Short-Timers there is always a choice. We find that frightening ... but we also find it beautiful.] Ralph: ["Say-do you fellows ever shake hands?"] Clotho and Lachesis glanced at each other, startled, and Ralph sensed some quick dialogue flashing between them in a kind of telepathic shorthand. When they looked back at Ralph, they wore identical nervous smiles-the smiles of teenage boys who have decided that if they can't find enough courage to ride the big rollercoaster at the amusement park this summer, they will never truly be men. Clotho: [We have observed this custom many times, of course, but no-we have never shaken hands.] Ralph looked at Lois and saw she was smiling ... but he thought he saw a shimmer of tears in her eyes, as well. He offered his hand to Lachesis first, because Mr. L. seemed marginally less jumpy than his colleague. ["Put 'er there, Mr. L. "I Lachesis looked at Ralph's hand for so long that Ralph began to think he wasn't going to be able to actually do it, although he clearly wanted to. Then, timidly, he put out his own small hand and allowed Ralph's larger one to close over it. There was a tingling vibration in Ralph's flesh as their auras first mingled, then merged . . . and in that merging he saw a series of swift, beautiful silver patterns. They reminded him of the Japanese characters on Ed's scarf. He pumped Lachesis's hand twice, slowly and formally, then released it. Lachesis's look of apprehension had been replaced by a large goony smile. He turned to his partner. [His force is almost completely unguarded during this ceremoni."

While this strange dialogue continued, I perceived the crowd rapidly increase.

You ought to make it a dialogue, don't you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.

As a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontations, I had outlined the Dresden story many times.

"Who is Beast Rabban? Any one of us, eh? But I digress. I speak the popular myth of prescience: to know the future absolutely! All of it! What fortunes could be made—and lost—on such absolute knowledge, eh? The rabble believes this. They believe that if a little bit is good, more must be better. How excellent! And if you handed one of them the complete scenario of his life, the unvarying dialogue up to his moment of death—what a hellish gift that'd be. What utter boredom! Every living instant he'd be replaying what he knew absolutely. No deviation. He could anticipate every response, every utterance—over and over and over and over and over and . . ."

I found, however, when I studied my dreams, as I was directed in a dialogue, that the image seen was never really that of friend, or relation, or my old school, though it might very closely resemble it.

And he replied that it was no trouble at all, and she said she was sure it must be, and he replied again, quite gruffly, that it was a pleasure, and by this time their eyes had joined in the dialogue and were making the most reckless remarks to one another, so that though their tongues had framed only the most innocent friendly syllables, she was bright pink and he was brick-red.

The dialogue between Vasishtha and Vishwamitra makes this abundantly clear.

At the end of each mental dialogue they would fall into each other's arms, make wild, angry, tear-stained and passionate love; and then everything would be all right.

Nonsense words amidst clouded silences: as if Saleem were conducting some inner dialogue of such intensity that fragments of it, or its pain, boiled up from time to time past the surface of his lips.

So passed in pleasing dialogue away The night; then down to short repose they lay; Till radiant rose the messenger of day.

In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue.

Dialogue Between Babieca and Rocinante Babieca "How comes it, Rocinante, you're so lean?"

During this dialogue, John Ferrier had stood fuming in the doorway, hardly able to keep his riding-whip from the backs of his two visitors.

If the love of magnificence, a taste for the elegant arts and improvements of human life, for whatever is agreeable in dress, furniture, or equipage, for architecture, statuary, painting and music, is to be regarded as luxury, sensuality and ostentation, even in those whose situation allows, without any inconveniency, the indulgence of those passions, it is certain that luxury, sensuality and ostentation are public benefits: since, without the qualities upon which he thinks proper to bestow such opprobrious names, the arts of refinement could never find encouragement and must languish for want of employment." 88 "Such," Smith concludes, "is the system of Dr. Mandeville, which once made so much noise in the world." However destructive it might appear, he thought "it could never have imposed upon so great a number of persons, nor have occasioned so general an alarm among those who are friends of better principles, had it not in some respects bordered upon the truth." 89 Mandeville's work originally consisted merely of a poem of 400 lines called "The Grumbling Hive: or Knaves Turn'd Honest," which according to his own account was first published as a sixpenny pamphlet about 1705. 90 In 1714 he reprinted it, appending a very much larger quantity of prose, under the title of The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Public Benefits; with an Essay on Charity and Charity Schools and a Search Into the Nature of Society . In 1729 he added further a second part, nearly as large as the first, consisting of a dialogue on the subject. The "grumbling hive," which is in reality a human society, is described in the poem as prospering greatly so long as it was full of vice:— "The worst of all the multitude Did something for the common good.