Calvin Trillin

On March 24th, I read an essay on Salon.com by Rebecca Traister about an essay in the New Yorker by Calvin Trillin.

I'm embarrased to say that I had never heard of Calvin Trillin, but Rebecca Traister's essay did more than pique my curiosity. She had grown up reading Calvin Trillin's books and was a big fan of his and his recently deceased wife, Alice. Traister wrote:

And so, when I saw this week's New Yorker story, "Alice, Off the Page," I settled down to read it quietly, privately, at home. Imagine my surprise upon discovering -- within the first few paragraphs of Trillin's 12-page remembrance -- that I was not the only person who loved Alice, who mourned her passing, or who admired her marriage without having met her or her husband. He writes of getting condolence cards from many people who never knew her, including one from a young woman in New York who wrote that sometimes she looked at her boyfriend and wondered, "But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?"

That was enough for me to leave work early and go directly to Bookstar and purchase the March 27th New Yorker (the one with the baby in a crib with barbed wire on the front). I sat in the store reading it for about half an hour, then I drove across town and read it in the East End parking lot for awhile. I skated for a couple of hours, and then went back to sit in my car and finish it. (It was twelve pages afterall!)

When I was done reading it, I felt like I had just made a new friend--two actually. Since then, I've ordered Trillin's Tummy Trilogy and passed my New Yorker on to several people. Today I decided to look and see if the article had gone online, and was thrilled to find that someone in Missouri had (supposedly) transcribed the entire thing! So, now that my New Yorker has made its way to Virginia, I ask you all to read Calvin Trillin's most excellent essay, Alice, Off the Page online.

You'll be glad you did. I promise.