Trillin, Calvin 1935–

(Calvin Marshall Trillin)

PERSONAL:

Born December 5, 1935, in Kansas City, MO; son of Abe and Edyth Trillin; married Alice Stewart (an English teacher and consultant), August 13, 1965 (died, 2001); children: Abigail, Sarah. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1957.

ADDRESSES:

Office—c/o New Yorker, 4 Times Square, New York, NY 10036-6522.

CAREER:

Journalist and writer. Time magazine, New York, NY, 1960-63, began as reporter in Atlanta, GA, and New York, NY, became writer in New York, NY; New Yorker, New York, NY, staff writer, 1963—; Nation, columnist, 1978-85; King Features, syndicated columnist, 1986-95; Time, columnist, 1996—. Also appeared in the films Sleepless in Seattle, 1993, and Michael, 1996; has appeared as himself on numerous television shows, including Tavis Smiley, The Daily Show, The Al Franken Show, American Masters, Bravo Profiles, and the Late Show with David Letterman.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Book Award nomination (paperback), 1980, for Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater; Books-across-the-Sea Ambassador of Honor citation, English-Speaking Union, 1985, for Third Helpings. Honorary degrees from Beloit College, 1987, Albertus Magnus College, 1990, State University of New York (SUNY), 1996, University of North Carolina, 1998, and Susquehanna University, 1999.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

An Education in Georgia: Charlayne Hunter, Hamilton Holmes, and the Integration of the University of Georgia, Viking (New York, NY), 1964.

U.S. Journal, Dutton (New York, NY), 1971.

American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1974.

Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater, Random House (New York, NY), 1978, Random House Trade Paperbacks (New York, NY), 2007.

Uncivil Liberties (collected columns), Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1982.

Third Helpings, Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1983.

Killings, Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1984.

With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties (collected columns), Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1985.

If You Can't Say Something Nice (collected columns), Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1987.

Travels with Alice, Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1989.

Enough's Enough (and Other Rules of Life) (collected columns), Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1990.

Remembering Denny, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1993.

The Tummy Trilogy (contains American Fried, Alice, Let's Eat, and Third Helpings), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1994.

Feeding a Yen; Savoring Local Specialties, from Kansas City to Cuzco, Random House (New York, NY), 2003.

About Alice, Random House (New York, NY), 2006.

(Author of foreword) Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2006.

FICTION

Barnett Frummer Is an Unbloomed Flower and Other Adventures of Barnett Frummer, Rosalie Mondle, Roland Magruder, and Their Friends (short stories), Viking (New York, NY), 1969.

Runestruck (novel), Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1977.

Floater (novel), Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1980.

American Stories (short stories), Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1991.

Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel, Random House (New York, NY), 2002.

OTHER

(And performer) Calvin Trillin's Uncle Sam (one-man show), produced at American Place Theatre (New York, NY), 1988.

(And performer) Calvin Trillin's Words, No Music (one-man show), produced at American Place Theatre (New York, NY), 1990.

Deadline Poet; or, My Life as a Doggerelist, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1994.

Too Soon to Tell, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1995.

Messages from My Father, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1996.

Family Man (essays), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1998.

Obliviously on He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme, Random House (New York, NY), 2004.

A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme, Random House (New York, NY), 2006.

Author of the column "Uncivil Liberties," Nation, 1978-85, King Features Syndicate, 1986—. Contributor to periodicals, including Atlantic, Harper's, Life, Esquire, and New York Times magazine.

ADAPTATIONS:

The Tummy Trilogy has been made into an audiobook.

SIDELIGHTS:

Calvin Trillin is a journalist, critic, and novelist who has won acclaim "partly because of his wayward scrambles across [America] in search of regional food … and partly because he has mastered a television manner that communicates his understated, tongue-in-cheek humor," according to Barry Siegel in a Los Angeles Times article. But in some ways, continued Siegel, "it is regrettable that Trillin is so funny, because this quality tends to obscure the fact that in his ‘U.S. Journal’ [a continuing series in the New Yorker] he may be offering some of the most valuable and unique reporting in the country today."

Trillin's early career saw him working at Time, where as a journalistic "floater" he migrated from one department to the next. As the author told Publishers Weekly interviewer John F. Baker, he spent some time in the "Medicine" section: "I didn't care for that—it seemed to tend toward the intestinal whenever I was there, with weekly breakthroughs in spleen research"; and also in the "Religion" section, which ill-suited Trillin. "I finally got out of that by prefacing everything with ‘alleged’; I'd write about ‘the alleged parting of the Red Sea,’ even ‘the alleged Crucifixion,’ and eventually they let me go."

Apparently, Trillin gained enough insight from his career at Time to produce, years later, a comic novel titled Floater. The fictional newsweekly through which protagonist Fred Becker floats is populated with trend-obsessed editors, egomaniacal writers, and eccentrics of every description. Becker enjoys his unfettered career until a rumor provided to him by a remarkably unreliable source threatens his future. The rumor—that the U.S. president's wife is pregnant—could cause Becker to be promoted to an odious bureau chief position if he is the first to report it truthfully. While Becker ponders what to do with his scoop, he accidentally leaks the rumor, only to find that the scoop is phony, "part of an elaborate, internecine power struggle at the magazine that is as unlikely as it is hilarious," according to Dan Wakefield in the Nation.

Some reviewers found Floater too thin. Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Stuart Schoffman thought "the chief flaw … is that the characters are so bloodless and inactive, pounded into two-dimensionality like paper-thin slices of veal." John D. Callaway noted in the Chicago Tribune Book World that, while Floater's humor often appealed to him, the characters "are less memorably drawn than the actors who star in 30-second commercials." Wakefield found Trillin's satire "sure and sharp but never mean-spirited. A kind of affection for the magazine comes through, and when Becker considers leaving it, he thinks how much he would miss the camaraderie, the gossip and stories and daily routines." Wakefield wrote that "Trillin is one of those rare writers who possess grace as well as wit."

Trillin's nonfiction, gleaned from his magazine pieces, covers a wide range. There are humor collections (Uncivil Liberties and With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties), political and social commentary (U.S. Journal and Too Soon to Tell), a study of homicide (Killings), and a book devoted to his father, the subject of several of Trillin's columns over the years, titled Messages from My Father.

With U.S. Journal the author recalls his travels across America, finding stories in everyday events in which there may be no apparent "news value." These subjects befit Trillin, who grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, and has always considered himself a midwesterner, despite his years of living in New York City. He sees his subjects as worthy of examination, even if they are not famous or important. "Upwardly mobile reporters tend to gauge themselves by the importance of the people they interview," Trillin told Siegel. "I don't think like that. Most of the people I talk to have never spoken to a reporter before. I began the ‘U.S. Journal’ series partly because I wanted to stay in touch with the country. I like regional stories. The fact is, government and politics are important, but they aren't the country."

Writing about U.S. Journal in the New York Times Book Review, Evan S. Connell stated: "Trillin's scales usually are balanced; he is a judicious journalist and has presented an agreeable collection. More important, several passages show compelling depth. As cautious as he is, he can create a wave of emotion in the reader—usually a wave of rage at the bigots, paralytic bureaucrats and myopic hucksters who infest [the book]. His account of desperate people in South Carolina is guaranteed to spoil your lunch."

In 1978, Trillin began to write "Uncivil Liberties," a humor column for the Nation. More recently published in syndication throughout the country, the column has been both a popular and critical success. Uncivil Liberties and With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties, which present that work in collected form, are likewise praised for the author's slightly skewed views of contemporary culture. "At the outset, Trillin defined the column as ‘a thousand words every three weeks for saying whatever's on my mind, particularly if what's on my mind is marginally ignoble,’" Jonathan Yardley reported in a Washington Post review. "Even in his less-inspired efforts," wrote Yardley, "he is perceptive, funny and iconoclastic." Trillin is "consistently sharp and imaginative" in Uncivil Liberties, according to a Detroit News contributor, "but don't expect a banquet of belly laughs from these fifty easy pieces. They're more likely to elicit appreciative smiles at the author's capacity for setting up and delivering clever dissections of his chosen prey."

More of Trillin's columns appear in the collections If You Can't Say Something Nice, Enough's Enough (and Other Rules of Life), and Too Soon to Tell. The columnist even conformed his comic view of U.S. politics to tropes and iambs in Deadline Poet; or, My Life as a Doggerelist. In this collection, which contains three years' worth of verse Trillin penned with regularity for the Nation, readers will enjoy one of the few known versifications of U.S. economic fluctuations: "Statistics now show where the boom dough went. / The middle classes hardly gained a nickel. / Two-thirds went to the richest one percent. / A breakthrough: we produced an upward trickle." Political satirist Mark Russell wrote in the New York Times Book Review: "Calvin Trillin is the name to lob into those fashionable hand-wringing laments about what has happened to the state of American humor and how the schlock is the message. Mark Twain, Robert Benchley and [S.J.] Perelman are dead but Calvin Trillin is right there with the post-funeral cocktail to assure us that life goes on."

Essays in each of Trillin's collections range in subject from the disappearance of chicken à la king (Trillin suggests that it is being stored by the government in huge silos) to the legality of miming—"At one point," Russell continued, "his wife must remind him that he has no legal standing for making a citizen's arrest of someone for performing mime in public." "It's to be hoped," declared Ross Thomas in the Washington Post Book World, "that Trillin will receive at least a footnote in the history of politics for having thought up the general purpose, fits-one, fits-all slogan, which is, of course, ‘Never Been Indicted.’" "It is Trillin's eye for spotting raging silliness among those who take themselves very, very seriously," explained Wes Smith in the Chicago Tribune, "that has made him an enormously popular wag."

In 1990's Too Soon to Tell, ninety columns mix the author's characteristic humor with pointed commentary on modern culture. From monkfish to the poseur lip-synching rock duo Milli Vanilli, Trillin uses newsworthy events as stepping stones toward each of his well-reasoned and pointed observations, opinions, or recollections. Noting that the author's "deadpan timing" keeps his essays from becoming dated, Michael Dirda commented in the Washington Post Book World that "Trillin can write well about anything: murder, Washington politics, Kansas City barbecue, the death of a gay friend, out-of-the-way places, growing up. What seems common to his diverse productiveness is a kind of old-fashioned patriotism: Trillin loves and celebrates American life even as he grouses about it."

More focused in subject matter was Trillin's 1984 collection, Killings. Based on several New Yorker articles, the book examines the kinds of murder that don't ordinarily make national headlines—those occurring in small towns, their victims uncelebrated individuals. "Trillin's interest—and ours—lies not in how some of us die but in how we live," noted Nation reviewer Ann Jones. The author, continued Jones, finds that the motivation for some of the murders should be viewed within the context of the social tensions in the cities and towns where the killings took place. "He describes what sociologists would call a conflict of cultures," wrote Jones. "A hillbilly guns down a trespassing filmmaker. A frustrated Navajo abducts a New Mexico mayor." Jones added: "Sometimes the conflict is more intimate [as in the case of] Lawrence Hartman, an exemplary Iowa farmer who in middle age, bedazzled by the big city and a young cocktail waitress, beat his wife to death." "In several cases the killing seems inadvertent, as if the killer didn't actually want to do it, but couldn't think of any other way to pass through the situation. Lack of imagination may be a motive," Anatole Broyard pointed out in a New York Times piece.

In Killings, Trillin "fashions suspense by starting with ordinary, day-to-day details; the violence grows imperceptibly," Richard Eder explained in the Los Angeles Times. "He roots his pieces in some particular community and set of circumstances and makes them so real that the death becomes not an extraordinary event but a natural process that has failed. Some of the most vivid reflections are those of neighbors who ask themselves what went wrong." To Yardley, the author "is a practitioner of hit-and-run journalism in the sense that he pounces on a locality, tells its story, and then moves on to the next. But he rises well above the genre for two reasons: His unusually deep interest in people … and his desire to find meaning in what at first seems meaningless. Killings is more than just another collection of magazine pieces; its internal coherence, unusual in such volumes, derives from the empathy and intelligence of its author."

If empathy and intelligence characterize Trillin's attitude toward people, most critics agree that passion and poignancy describe his attitude toward food. The author has made his true love known in three volumes, each celebrating the variety of American cuisine. Indeed, Trillin's eloquence on such matters as fried chicken and Chicago-style pizza has caused him to be labeled "the Walt Whitman of American eats" by Craig Claiborne in the New York Times Book Review and a "food pornographer" by Nelson W. Polsby in Harper's. American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater is the first of Trillin's books on food and travel and is "composed of a blend of waspish sociology and a sensuality so explicit as to border on the prurient," warned a Saturday Review critic. In his review, Polsby appreciated the author's dilemma as a roving gourmand. When Trillin arrives in town, explained Polsby, the gentry "refuse to tell him where [the good] restaurants are. Instead, they are forever touting him onto big-priced fake ‘Continental’ eateries, places with lots of decor, long-winded menus, revolving views of the surrounding wasteland, and terrible food. When hunger strikes in a strange town, he despairs of interviewing local informants, and he has taken to rummaging through the restaurant section of the Yellow Pages, looking for restaurants having no display ads or those called by only the first name of the proprietor." "Some will say [that, in American Fried, Trillin] has written a nasty satire on gourmets, but they err who think so," claimed Washington Post Book World writer Henry Mitchell. "Trillin genuinely loves all the stuff he writes about, no doubt of that. Love transforms all. As Proust took the simple madeleine and with genius made it a glory of his book, so Trillin takes the hamburger, takes the chili-dog, takes the pizza, and does as much or more."

An entreaty to his wife comprises the title of Trillin's second food-appreciation book, Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater. Alice Trillin, it seems, did not quite share her husband's enthusiasm for barbecue and burgers, and the couple's conflicts figure as a dramatic element in the volume. While Trillin has some fun at his wife's expense in Alice, Let's Eat, Alice once told her side of the story in a Nation review of her husband's book. "I am not against quests for the perfect ham hock or the perfect barbecue or even, for that matter, for the perfect roast polecat haunch," she explained. "But I think that anyone starting out on such a quest should be aware that his guide is someone who will travel all the way to a place called Horse Cave, Kentucky, because he likes the way the name Horse Cave, Kentucky, sounds when he drops it to me over the phone." Alice Trillin continued: "This is offered as a warning by someone who has been assigned the role of heavy in her husband's book just because she likes to say fettuccine with white truffles and cream occasionally—a dish considered by some to represent the elitist Eastern Establishment."

New Republic contributor Ben Yagoda regretted that there is some "bad news" about Alice, Let's Eat: the book "is not quite as consistently delightful as American Fried. I blame this in part on the fact that in the new book Trillin is disappointed a number of times—by the Kentucky mutton, by a Vermont wildgame supper where he can't tell the beaver from the buffalo." Yagoda went on: "Also, he ventures away from the U.S. too often: there's a trip to Martinique, one to France, and two to England." Outside of America, claimed Yagoda, "Trillin seems somehow out of place, like a hamburger stand on the Champs Elysées. But read Alice, Let's Eat," wrote the reviewer, who called Trillin "a worthy celebrant of one of the few authentic triumphs of American culture. His book will bring a smile to your lips and a growl to your stomach."

Third Helpings differs from Trillin's first two food books because it contains a campaign "to have the national Thanksgiving dish changed from turkey to spaghetti carbonara." The author defends his stance with a retelling of the First Thanksgiving legend. In Trillin's version the Indians joined the Pilgrims for a Thanksgiving feast, taking the precaution "of [bringing] along one dish of their own. They brought a dish their ancestors had been taught earlier by Christopher Columbus, discoverer of the New World. The dish was spaghetti carbonara." As in the earlier works, American patriotism figures into Third Helpings. After sampling the food at a Mediterranean resort, Trillin declares that the fancy fare is no better "than the Italian sausage sandwiches he dotes upon on Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan," as Newsweek's Gene Lyons related. "Neither, for that matter, does the Italian cuisine surpass the roast duck and dirty rice at Didee's in Baton Rouge or Opelousas, Louisiana." In pieces such as the account of the Crawford County, Kansas, fried chicken war between Chicken Annie and Chicken Mary, Trillin proves to Beryl Lieff Benderly that "under cover of a mania for dim sum, spaghetti carbonara, and pit barbecue, [the author] is actually a superlative prose stylist, an inimitable humorist, and an absolutely first-rate people writer." In a Washington Post Book World article, Benderly added that Trillin's articles "concern not only comestibles by characters; they concentrate on talented devotees who take what they eat and serve every bit as seriously as Trillin does."

Trillin's fourth contribution to his ongoing saga of food and travel is Travels with Alice. In this volume, Trillin wanders through France, Italy, and other places around the globe, ostensibly to take in the culture, but really to take in the native eatables. "Even when the itinerary is the standard tour of museums, monuments and monasteries," wrote Chicago Tribune contributor James Idems, "his nose is atwitch and his eye peeled for the out-of-the-way market or café that specializes in the local cuisine." "This late-twentieth-century autocrat of the breakfast table takes these setbacks in stride, ever confident that if he just keeps hanging around, keeping one eye on the scenery and the other on the menu, sooner or later a meal worth eating will make its presence known," declared Yardley in the Washington Post. "So far he's been right, with the happy result that he's well-fed and his readers are well-read."

From love of food and all things American, Trillin turned to love of family in 1996's Messages from My Father: A Memoir. Writing about his father—a dreamer who wanted greatness for his children, a proud American, and a loving, idealistic man with a subtle sense of humor—Trillin recalls his own childhood memories of his Russian-born father Abe Trillin, a grocery store owner who was determined that Calvin graduate from Yale and become president of the United States. "In Messages from My Father, Mr. Trillin reveals the elusive source of his gifts," maintained Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in his New York Times review, "and he demonstrates how well he learned the subtle lessons conveyed to him." On a more somber note, Trillin recounts the death of a homosexual friend he had known since his days at Yale in the bestselling 1993 work Remembering Denny, which Michael Dorris lauded as "an eloquent, heartfelt protest against disappointment and stunted opportunity" in the New York Times Book Review.

In 1988, following in the footsteps of Mark Twain, Trillin took his humor to the stage—he had previously performed on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and on radio—with the opening of his one-man show Calvin Trillin's Uncle Sam. He followed up in 1990 with another, Calvin Trillin's Words, No Music, featuring "language … politics, certainly some mention of a few presidents," he told fellow humorist Jackie Mason in a conversation published in the New York Times. "Calvin Trillin is the Buster Keaton of performance humorists," declared Mel Gussow in a New York Times review of the second show. "As droll as he is deadpan, he never once suggests that he thinks he is as funny as we know he is. He lets the audience do the laughing." Gussow continued: "His ease and professionalism in facing his public should be an inspiration to writers who hide behind hard covers."

In his book Family Man, Trillin ruminates on the family and parenthood. A.J. Anderson in the Library Journal wrote: "He demonstrates once again that he thoroughly understands the difficult technique of clever light writing."

Although Trillin had a collection of short stories called American Stories published in 1995, more than twenty years passed between his novel Floater and his next novel, Tepper Isn't Going Out, published in 2002. In this comic look at New York, Trillin tells the story of Murray Tepper, who searches out parking spaces so he can sit in his car and read the newspaper in peace. Since finding parking on the streets in New York is difficult, Tepper's predilection for snatching parking spaces raises the ire of many, including the city's mayor, who tries to stop Tepper. On the other hand, some New Yorkers become intrigued with Tepper after an article about him appears in the East Village Rag, and they begin to line up outside his car to talk with a man they have come to believe has some special kind of wisdom. "Readers feeling the need to relax with a book that's very funny, humane, and not too taxing to read will enjoy this clever tale of urban life at the time of the millennium," wrote Mary Ellen Quinn in Booklist. A reviewer writing in Publishers Weekly noted that "Trillin captures dozens of pitch-perfect New York moments." In a review in the Los Angeles Times, Brigitte Frase called the book "a much-needed addition to automotive literature…. Trillin is at his charmingly funny best in this good-humored satire of urban politics and media spin."

Like many political commentators, Trillin found a great subject in President George W. Bush. His collection Obliviously on He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme, covers the Bush administration in verse. Ray Olson, contributor to Booklist, wrote: "There's nothing for improving a satirist's form like having a good target." Olson also noted: "The present presidential administration, led as it is by the least articulate politician in living memory (as Trillin notes, ‘W’ is no Dan Quayle), seems heaven-sent for satire, however, and Trillin rises to its benison."

A reporter, novelist, and essayist, Trillin has shown that he can tackle almost any type of writing. "I've never known exactly which hat I was wearing," Trillin was quoted as saying in the Columbia Journalism Review. "The reporter fedora with the press badge in the hatband, or the jester with the pompom bouncing in my eyes."

In his 2006 book, the memoir About Alice, the author recounts his life with his late wife, who died on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 from an unrelated heart attack. The remembrance, first published in the New Yorker in a shorter form, is a loving eulogy that focuses on the couple's marriage and their family life. The author recalls their first encounter and writes of his wife's loving relationship with their daughters, her concern for others (she often taught at correctional institutions and drug treatment centers), her many accomplishments, and her innate optimism. Fred Grimm, writing in the Miami Herald, commented: "The prose of Calvin Trillin, witty and light as gossamer, has been harnessed to a sorrow profound enough for Dostoyevsky." A Kirkus Reviews contributor referred to About Alice as "a small book that betokens a deep, undimmed affection."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors in the News, Volume 1, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 185: American Literary Journalists, 1945-1955, First Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997, pp. 324-327.

Trillin, Calvin, Third Helpings, Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1983.

Trillin, Calvin, Deadline Poet; or, My Life as a Doggerelist, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1994.

Trillin, Calvin, Messages from My Father: A Memoir, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1996.

Trillin, Calvin, About Alice, Random House (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

American Journalism Review, December, 1985, Scott Kraft, "The Chronicles of Calvin Trillin," pp. 43-47.

Booklist, March 15, 1998, review of Family Man, p. 1178; July, 1999, review of The Tummy Trilogy, p. 1909; November 1, 2001, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel, p. 444; November 1, 2006, Mark Knoblauch, review of About Alice, p. 4.

Chicago Tribune, February 26, 1984; December 15, 1988; November 23, 1989.

Chicago Tribune Book World, November 30, 1980; March 18, 1984.

Christian Century, February 20, 2007, review of About Alice, p. 59.

Columbia Journalism Review, November-December, 2001, "Funny Guys," p. 92.

Columbus Dispatch, January 11, 2007, Jeb Phillips, "Tribute to Wife Should Be Shared."

Detroit News, May 30, 1982, review of Uncivil Liberties.

Entertainment Weekly, December 22, 2006, Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, review of About Alice, p. 87; February 16, 2007, John Grogan, "A Book You Have to Read," p. 83.

Harper's, August, 1974, Nelson Polsby.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 1998, review of Family Man, p. 570; November 1, 2006, review of About Alice, p. 1120.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, March 20, 2002, Jean Blish Siers, review of Tepper Isn't Going Out, p. K2221.

Library Journal, September 15, 1998, A.J. Anderson, review of Family Man, p. 81; November 1, 2001, A.J. Anderson, review of Tepper Isn't Going Out, p. 134; December 1, 2006, Joyce Sparrow, review of About Alice, p. 126.

Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2002, Brigitte Frase, "A Space of One's Own: Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel," p. R-4.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 7, 1980; April 24, 1984; November 11, 1990, p. 9; March 8, 1992, p. 10; April 19, 1994, p. 6; June 16, 1996.

Miami Herald, January 3, 2007, Fred Grimm, review of About Alice; February 11, 2007, Connie Ogle, "Alice Revisited: The Way She Really Was."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 27, 2006, Jim Higgins, "Musings on a Beloved Muse: In Lyrical Memoir, Calvin Trillin Tells Us All ‘About Alice.’"

Nation, October 21, 1978; October 11, 1980; March 3, 1984; December 22, 1984; February 4, 2002, review of Tepper Isn't Going Out, p. 32.

New Leader, November-December, 2001, Walter Goodman, review of Tepper Isn't Going Out, p. 36.

New Republic, October 7, 1978, Ben Yagoda, review of Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater.

Newsweek, October 27, 1980; April 4, 1983; February 13, 1984.

New York Review of Books, July 16, 1998, review of Family Man, p. 15.

New York Times, June 25, 1998, review of Family Man, p. E9; February 12, 2002, Mel Gussow, review of Tepper Isn't Going Out, p. B1.

New York Times Book Review, June 20, 1999, review of Family Man, p. 24; June 2, 2002, review of Tepper Isn't Going Out, p. 24.

O, the Oprah Magazine, January 1, 2007, Thomas Beller, "The Pleasure of Her Company: Calvin Trillin's Loving Tribute to His Muse, Alice," p. 143.

Publishers Weekly, March 23, 1998, review of Family Man, p. 84; October 22, 2001, review of Tepper Isn't Going Out, p. 41; October 30, 2006, review of About Alice, p. 50; January 29, 2007, "Alice's Testament," p. 12.

Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health, September, 1998, review of Family Man, p. 6.

Saturday Review, May 18, 1974, review of American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, January 10, 2007, Chauncey Mabe, "Calvin Trillin's Loving Tribute to His Wife Showcases the Best of the Woman He So Often Included in His Essays."

Time, June 15, 1998, review of Family Man, p. 81.

Washington Post, October 23, 1980; December 4, 1980; May 19, 1982; February 8, 1984; April 16, 1985; October 11, 1989.

Washington Post Book World, October 26, 1969; June 2, 1974; April 10, 1983; April 10, 1987; October 18, 1987; March 29, 1992, p. 12; June 20, 1999, review of Family Man, p. 10.

ONLINE

Goodman Speakers Bureau Web site,http://www.goodmanspeakersbureau.com/ (June 15, 2007), profile of the author.

Internet Movie Database,http://www.imdb.com/ (June 15, 2007), information on the author's film and television work.

NNDB: Tracking the Entire World,http://www.nndb.com/ (June 15, 2007), biographical data on the author.

Powells.com,http://www.powells.com/ (June 15, 2007), Dave Weich, "Calvin Trillin Is Going Out—to Eat (Again)."

Salon.com,http://www.salon.com/ (September, 4, 2002), Laura Miller, "The Food Writer and Humorist Gets Serious about Fathers and Sons," interview with Calvin Trillin.