Calvin Trillin

{{Infobox person

| name = Calvin Trillin

| image = CalvinTrillin (cropped).jpg

| alt =

| caption = Trillin in 2011

| birth_name = Calvin Marshall Trillin

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1935|12|5}}

| birth_place = Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.

| death_date =

| death_place =

| other_names =

| awards = 2013, Thurber Prize for American Humor

| known_for =

| occupation =

| spouse = {{marriage|Alice Stewart Trillin|1965|2001|end=died}}

| children = 2

| education = Yale University (BA)

}}

Calvin Marshall Trillin (born December 5, 1935) is an American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist.{{cite magazine|url=http://www.thenation.com/authors/calvin-trillin |title=Calvin Trillin |magazine=The Nation |access-date=March 10, 2017 |issn=0027-8378}} He is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor (2012) and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2008).

Early life and education

Calvin Trillin was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935 to Edythe and Abe Trillin.{{cite web|url=http://gvshp.org/blog/2011/10/26/my-favorite-things-calvin-trillin/ |title=My Favorite Things: Calvin Trillin |date=26 October 2011 |access-date=2013-03-17}} In his book Messages from My Father, he said his parents called him "Buddy".{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/06/books/books-of-the-times-a-father-as-drum-major-for-his-son-s-america.html |title=A Father as Drum Major For His Son's America |first=Christopher |last=Lehmann-Haupt |author-link=Christopher Lehmann-Haupt |newspaper=The New York Times |date=June 6, 1996}} Raised Jewish,{{cite web | url=https://www.jta.org/2016/06/26/culture/writer-calvin-trillin-dishes-about-civil-rights-judaism-and-the-art-of-reporting | title=Writer Calvin Trillin dishes about civil rights, Judaism and the art of reporting | date=26 June 2016 }} he attended public schools in Kansas City, graduated from Southwest High School, and went on to Yale University, where he was the roommate and friend of Peter M. Wolf (for whose 2013 memoir, My New Orleans, Gone Away, he wrote a humorous foreword), and where he served as chair of the Yale Daily News and was a member of the Pundits and Scroll and Key before graduating in 1957;The Yale Banner, History of the Class of 1957. he later served as a Fellow of the University.

Career

After serving in the U.S. Army, Trillin worked as a reporter for Time magazine, then joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1963.{{cite magazine |url=http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/calvin-trillin |title=Contributors – Calvin Trillin |magazine=The New Yorker |issn=0028-792X| access-date=March 10, 2017}} He wrote the magazine's "U.S. Journal" series from 1967 to 1982, covering local events both serious and quirky throughout the United States. His reporting for the magazine on the racial integration of the University of Georgia was published in his first book, An Education in Georgia (1964).

File:Calvin Trillin by Bernard Gotfryd edit.jpg in 1987]]

From 1975 to 1987, Trillin contributed articles to Moment,{{cite archive|first= Calvin|last= Trillin|item= Jacob Schiff and My Uncle Ben Daynovsky|type= Textual record|date= May 1975|pages= 41-43|Series= Moment Magazine|collection= Moment Magazine Archives|institution= Opinion Archives|location= Digital Archives}} an independent magazine which focuses on the life of the American Jewish community.

Trillin also writes for The Nation. He began in 1978 with a column called "Variations", which was eventually renamed "Uncivil Liberties"; it ran through 1985. The same name was used for the column when it was syndicated weekly in newspapers, from 1986 to 1995, and essentially the same column ran (without a name) in Time from 1996 to 2001. His humor columns for The Nation during the 1980s and 1990s often made fun of then-editor Victor Navasky, whom he jokingly referred to as the wily and parsimonious Navasky. (He once wrote that the magazine paid "in the high two figures.") Since July 1990, Trillin has written humorous poems about current events as part of his weekly "Deadline Poet" column in The Nation.

Family, travel and food are major themes in Trillin's work. Three of his books on food — American Fried (1974), Alice, Let's Eat (1978) and Third Helpings (1983) — were collected in the 1994 compendium The Tummy Trilogy. Trillin has also written several autobiographical books and magazine articles, including Messages from My Father (1996), Family Man (1998), and an essay in the March 27, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, "Alice, Off the Page", discussing his late wife. In December 2006, a slightly expanded version of the essay was published as a book titled About Alice. 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".Trillin, Calvin. [https://books.google.com/books?id=rEuYqL3zRQcC&q=%22calvin+trillin%22+jewish Messages from My Father], p. 101. Macmillan Publishers, 1997. {{ISBN|0-374-52508-0}}. Accessed August 31, 2011. ""My father took it for granted that I would always be Jewish, whatever the background of the person I married. On the other hand, he didn't exactly raise me to be a Jew; he raised me to be an American."

Trillin 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 (2002). The latter novel is about a man who enjoys parking in New York City for its own sake and is unusual among novels for exploring the subject of parking.

In 2008, Trillin was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.{{Cite web |date=2008-04-17 |title=Robert Caro, Calvin Trillin Voted Into Arts Academy |url=https://observer.com/2008/04/robert-caro-calvin-trillin-voted-into-arts-academy/ |access-date=2022-08-31 |website=Observer |language=en-US}} The same year, The Library of America selected Trillin's essay "Stranger with a Camera" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime. In 2012, Trillin was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor for Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff, published by Random House.{{Cite web |last=Bosman |first=Julie |date=2012-10-02 |title=Calvin Trillin Wins Thurber Prize for American Humor |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/calvin-trillin-wins-thurber-prize-for-american-humor/ |access-date=2022-08-31 |website=ArtsBeat |language=en}} In 2013, he was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame.

Personal life

In 1965, Trillin married the educator and writer Alice Stewart Trillin, with whom he had two daughters.{{Cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |date=2001-09-13 |title=Alice Trillin, 63, Educator, Author and Muse, Is Dead |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/us/alice-trillin-63-educator-author-and-muse-is-dead.html |access-date=2022-08-31 |issn=0362-4331}} Alice died in 2001. He also has four grandchildren. Trillin lives in the Greenwich Village area of New York City.

Trillin was a close friend of Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne.{{cite web |last1=Kachka |first1=Boris |title="I Was No Longer Afraid to Die. I Was Now Afraid Not to Die." |url=https://nymag.com/arts/books/features/joan-didion-2011-10/ |website=New York |access-date=7 February 2024 |language=en |date=14 October 2011}} He met Dunne when the two worked at Time in the 1960s.{{cite web |last1=Kisonak |first1=Rick |title=Movie Review: 'Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold' Could Make Viewers Re-Evaluate an Icon |url=https://www.sevendaysvt.com/on-screen/joan-didion-the-center-will-not-hold-could-make-viewers-re-evaluate-an-icon-9964138 |website=Seven Days |access-date=6 February 2024 |language=en}} Dunne wrote an afterword to Trillin's 1993 book Remembering Denny and Trillin contributed a foreword to Dunne's posthumously released collection Regards (2005). In September 2022, Trillin was one of the speakers at Didion's memorial service in New York City.{{cite web |last1=Stewart |first1=Sophia |title=Joan Didion Remembered at St. John the Divine |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/Obituary/article/90426-joan-didion-remembered-at-st-john-the-divine.html |website=Publishers Weekly |access-date=6 February 2024 |language=en}}

Bibliography

=Non-fiction=

{{cite book |title=An Education in Georgia: Charlayne Hunter, Hamilton Holmes, and the Integration of the University of Georgia |location= New York|publisher= Viking |year=1964 |isbn=978-0820313887}}
{{cite book |title= U.S. Journal |location= New York|publisher= E.P. Dutton and Co |year=1971|isbn=978-0525226604}}
{{cite book |title=American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater |date=1974 |publisher=Doubleday |location=New York |isbn=978-0385004404}}
{{cite book |title=Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater |date=1978 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-0765198310}}
{{cite book |title=Uncivil Liberties |date=1982 |publisher= Ticknor and Fields |location=Boston |isbn=978-0899190976}}
{{cite book |title=Third Helpings |date=1983 |publisher=Ticknor and Fields |location=Boston |isbn=978-0899191737}}
{{cite book |title=Killings |date=1984 |publisher=Ticknor and Fields |location=Boston |isbn=978-0399591402}}
{{cite book |title=With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties |date=1985 |publisher=Ticknor and Fields |location=Boston |isbn=978-0899193533}}
{{cite book |title=If You Can't Say Something Nice |date=1987 |publisher=Ticknor and Fields |location=Boston |isbn=978-0899195315}}
{{cite book |title=Travels with Alice |date=1989 |publisher=Ticknor and Fields |location=Boston |isbn=978-0899199108}}
{{cite book |title=Enough's Enough: And Other Rules of Life |date=1990 |publisher=Ticknor and Fields |location=Boston |isbn=978-0899199580}}
{{cite book |title=American Stories |date=1991 |publisher=Ticknor and Fields |location=Boston |isbn=978-0395593677}}
{{cite book |title=Remembering Denny |date=1993 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |isbn=978-0374226077}}
{{cite book |title=Too Soon to Tell |date=1995 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |isbn=978-0374278465}}
{{cite book |title=Messages from My Father: A Memoir |date=1996 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |isbn=978-0374525088}}
{{cite book |title=Family Man |date=1998 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |isbn=9780374525835}}
{{cite book |title=Feeding a Yen: Savoring Local Specialties, from Kansas City to Cuzco |date=2003 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-0375508080}}
{{cite book |title=About Alice |date=2006 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-1400066155}}
{{cite book |title=Trillin on Texas |date=2011 |publisher=University of Texas Press |location=Austin |isbn=978-0292726505}}
{{cite book |title=Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff |date=2011 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-1400069828}}
{{cite book |title=Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America |date=2016 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-0399588242}}
{{cite book |title=The Lede: Dispatches from a Life in the Press |date=2024 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-0593596449}}

=Novels=

{{cite book |title=Runestruck |date=1977 |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |location=New York |isbn=978-0316852753}}
{{cite book |title=Floater |date=1980 |publisher=Ticknor and Fields |location=Boston |isbn=978-0899190174}}
{{cite book |title=Tepper Isn't Going Out |date=2002 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-0375758515}}

=Short fiction=

{{cite book |title=Barnett Frummer is an Unbloomed Flower |date=1969 |publisher=Viking |location=New York |isbn=978-0670148066}}

=Poetry=

{{cite book |title=Deadline Poet: My Life As a Doggerelist |date=1994 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |isbn=978-0374135522}}
{{cite book |title=Obliviously On He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme |date=2004 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-1400062881}}
{{cite book |title=A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme |date=2006 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-1400065561}}
{{cite book |title=Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme |date=2008 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-1400068289}}
{{cite book |title=Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse |date=2012 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-0812993684}}
{{cite book |title=No Fair! No Fair! And Other Jolly Poems of Childhood |date=2016 |publisher=Orchard Books |location=New York |isbn=978-0545825788}}

References

External links

[http://www.thenation.com/authors/calvin-trillin Column archive] at The Nation
{{C-SPAN|13169}}
{{IMDb name|872821}}
{{NYTtopic|people/t/calvin_trillin}}
{{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1552/the-art-of-humor-no-3-calvin-trillin| title=Calvin Trillin, The Art of Humor No. 3| author= George Plimpton| date=Fall 1995| journal=The Paris Review | volume=Fall 1995| issue=136}}
{{cite magazine| url=http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1862862,00.html| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081202020055/http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1862862,00.html| url-status=dead| archive-date=December 2, 2008| title=Q & A Calvin Trillin| author= Alex Altman | date=December 1, 2008| magazine=Time }}
[http://www.powells.com/blog/interviews/calvin-trillin-is-going-out-amp-151-to-eat-again-by-dave/ "Calvin Trillin Is Going Out — to Eat (Again)"], Dave Weich, Powells.com
[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/nyregion/06trillin.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=calvin%20trillin&st=cse&oref=slogin Strolling and Snacking with Calvin Trillin The New York Times]
[http://www.salon.com/weekly/interview960624.html "The Salon Interview: Calvin Trillin"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101030164055/http://www.salon.com/weekly/interview960624.html |date=2010-10-30 }}
[http://brooklynrail.org/2005/06/express/chillin-with-calvin-trillin "Chillin’ with Calvin Trillin"] Interview by Pamela Ryckman, The Brooklyn Rail (June 2005)
[http://www.kuow.org/post/politics-verse-calvin-trillin Politics In Verse With Calvin Trillin Interview.]