(From Irwin Edman’s Under Whatever Sky, 1951.)

“And what do you think of the election of Reuther to the U.A.W.?” I heard the gentleman ask.

“Well, really, I haven’t thought about it at all,” replied the candid young non-thinker opposite him.

And I was led to reflect on the number of times, confronted with a sudden question about one of the thousand things a well-bred contemporary is supposed to have some opinion about, I have invented one on the spot, ad hoc and ad lib and ad nauseam. Nor am I alone. I have seldom observed anyone instigated by such an immediate and searching interrogation refuse to give a reply and, often in quite grammatical form, a judgment — on Russia, on the atom bomb, on existentialism, on socialized medicine.

Judging by myself, I suspect I know what happens. It is only civil to answer a question. It seems blunt and rude, as well as mildly shameful, not to have a spontaneous reply concerning the major issues that are troubling mankind or the minor problems that are agitating the local parish. It seems as absurd to say: “I haven’t made up my mind,” in answer to an inquiry concerning Argentina, as it would to say the same words in reply to the question: “Isn’t it a nice day?” And once one begins a reply, the rest is all too fatally easy. One begins not quite knowing what it is one intended to say, or what actual opinions, if any, one does have on the subject that has been broached. The theme gathers momentum in the soliloquizing mind. Within a few moments the odds and ends of anything one has read on the matter begin to come together. The idea develops almost of itself. It is a tune that begins to complicate itself in the mind. And the first thing one knows, there is a flow of sentences; and as they flow, the tone of conviction grows more emphatic.

The more one talks, the more one feels in the internal equilibrium of one’s being: “This is deeply what I believe.” And more than that. Within two minutes, it becomes quite clear to the speaker that these notions which he has quickly marshaled out of the radio commentaries, the editorials, the brochures he has read in the last year, are opinions of his own — long, deeply, and painfully pondered. They are offered now with the weight of conclusions that have grown out of months of industrious and conscientious study and reflection.

“What do you think of Niebuhr’s theology, of the new president of Vassar, of the future of air transportation, of book clubs, of the new women’s hats, of Truman’s chances in 1948, of the nature of happiness?” At the drop of a hat, or of the handkerchief of the lady who asks the question, I would blush not to have a reply. And like many others, I become so absorbed in developing the music and dialectic of my answer that I have no time to blush at the fatuities the answer may contain.