Money not spent on a luxury one considered even briefly is the equivalent of windfall income and should be spent accordingly.
"Alice's Law of Compensatory Cash Flow"in Alice, Let's Eat (1978)
Health food makes me sick.
:
Calvin Marshall Trillin is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalistA journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist.
Biography
Trillin attended public schools in Kansas City and went on to
Yale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, where he served as chairman of the
Yale Daily NewsThe Yale Daily News is an independent student newspaper published by Yale University students in New Haven, Connecticut since January 28, 1878...
and was a member of
Scroll and KeyThe Scroll and Key Society is a secret society, founded in 1842 at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. It is the wealthiest and second oldest Yale secret society...
before graduating in 1957; he later served as a
FellowTrustee is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, can refer to any person who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility for the benefit of another...
of the
UniversityThe Yale Corporation, sometimes, and more formally, known as The President and Fellows of Yale College, is the governing body of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.The Corporation comprises 19 members:...
. After a stint in the
U.S. ArmyThe United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
, he worked as a reporter for
Time magazine before joining the staff of
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
in 1963. His reporting for
The New Yorker on the
racial integrationRacial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...
of the
University of GeorgiaThe University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
was published in his first book,
An Education in Georgia. He wrote the magazine’s
U.S. Journal series from 1967 to 1982, covering local events both serious and quirky throughout the United States.
He has also written for
The Nation magazine. He began in 1978 with a column called
Variations, which was eventually renamed
Uncivil Liberties and ran through 1985. The same name --
Uncivil Liberties -- was used for the column when it was syndicated weekly in newspapers, from 1986 to 1995. Essentially the same column then ran without a name in
Time magazine from 1996 to 2001. His humor columns for
The Nation often made fun of the editor of the time,
Victor NavaskyVictor Saul Navasky is a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was editor of The Nation from 1978 until 1995, and its publisher and editorial director 1995 to 2005. In November 2005 he became the publisher emeritus...
, whom he jokingly referred to as
the wily and parsimonious Navasky. From the July 2, 1990, issue of
The Nation to today, Trillin has written his weekly "Deadline Poet" column—humorous poems about current events. Trillin has written considerably more pieces for
The Nation than any other single person.
Family, travel and food are also themes in Trillin's work. Three of his books
American Fried; Alice, Let's Eat; and
Third Helpings; were individually published and are also collected in the 1994 compendium
The Tummy Trilogy. In 1965, he married the educator and writer
Alice Stewart TrillinAlice Stewart Trillin was an educator, author, film producer and longtime muse to her husband, author Calvin Trillin. She was also known for her work with cancer patients...
with whom he had two daughters. Alice died in 2001. The most autobiographical of his works are
Messages from My Father, Family Man, and an essay in the March 27, 2006,
New Yorker, “Alice, Off the Page,” discussing his late wife. A slightly expanded version of the latter essay, entitled
About Alice, was published as a book on December 26, 2006. In
Messages from My Father, Trillin recounts how his father always expected his son to be a Jew, but had primarily "raised me to be an American".
He has also written a collection of short stories—
Barnett Frummer Is An Unbloomed Flower (1969) — and three comic novels,
Runestruck (1977),
Floater (1980), and
Tepper Isn’t Going Out (2001). This last novel is about a man who enjoys parking in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
for its own sake and is unusual among novels for exploring the subject of
parkingParking is the act of stopping a vehicle and leaving it unoccupied for more than a brief time. Parking on one or both sides of a road is commonly permitted, though often with restrictions...
.
In 2008, The Library of America selected the essay
Stranger with a Camera for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.
Trillin lives in the
Greenwich VillageGreenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
area of
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Books
(Nonfiction unless otherwise noted)
- An Education in Georgia: Charlayne Hunter, Hamilton Holmes, and the Integration of the University of Georgia (1964)
- Barnett Frummer is an Unbloomed Flower (short stories, 1969),
- U.S. Journal (1971)
- American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater (1974)
- Runestruck (novel, 1977)
- Alice, Let’s Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater (1978)
- Floater (novel, 1980)
- Uncivil Liberties (1982)
- Third Helpings (1983)
- Killings (1984)
- With All Disrespect (1985)
- If You Can’t Say Something Nice (1987)
- Travels with Alice (1989)
- Enough’s Enough (and Other Rules of Life) (1990)
- American Stories (1991)
- Remembering Denny (1993)
- Deadline Poet: My Life as a Doggerelist (comic verse with commentary, 1994)
- Too Soon to Tell (1995)
- Messages From My Father (1996)
- Family Man (1998)
- Tepper Isn’t Going Out (novel, 2001)
- Feeding a Yen (2003)
- Obliviously on He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme (comic verse with commentary, 2004)
- A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme (comic verse with commentary, 2006)
- About Alice (2006)
- Deciding The Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme (comic verse with commentary, 2008)
- "Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin" (2011) ISBN 978-1400069828
External links