Dear Eric: Our next-door neighbor is a longtime university professor who is well known in his field. We have been neighbors for many years, and we all get along well. He lives alone.

An irritating habit of his is to stop by and launch into long-winded stories about some mundane event in his present or past life or to pontificate about a current event. He fancies himself as a raconteur, and because he is used to having a lecture hall of students listening to him (supposedly), he thinks we also should be entertained and enthralled by his musings. We aren’t.

It is particularly annoying because he never asks about anything going on in our lives. Another mutual friend is equally frustrated with him.

Do you have any suggestions to deal with this? It doesn’t happen frequently enough to demand

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