From the archives...CALVIN TRILLIN
Upon Reading In The Middle Of The Night
Don’t plan on reading "Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: 40 Years of Funny Stuff" if you happen to be sleeping with someone. By the time you’re halfway through one of his Funny Stuff riffs, “Corrections” for example, you will have guffawed awake your (fill in one) girlfriend, wife, husband, boyfriend, family dog, children in the next room, who will probably not share your hilarity since it is 3:20 AM, an hour customarily reserved for sound repose.
You will quite possibly be greeted with sullen stares at the hour of normal reveille. Citing Trillin as a master of dry, urbane, witty humor who should be on any intelligent reader’s list won’t get much traction. You will likely discover that your copy of said book has gone missing by nightfall.
It’s hard to believe a guy could have a writing voice so damn funny, slyly literate, and keep it going for forty years. His ‘stuff’ has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, and a bunch of books. Ordinarily when you see a list like this, you’re thinking, well those are high falutin’ places, he’s probably pretty stuffy. Wrong.
There are about two hundred bite sized essays and short zippy poems in the twenty sections of Funny Stuff – a few categories: “The Media – Liberal Elite and Otherwise”, “Tales Of A Clean Plate Ranger” (figure that one out), “High Society and Just Plain Rich People”, “Twenty Years Of Pols – One Poem Each”, “Family Matters”, “Beasts Of The Field, Fish Of The Sea, And Chiggers In The Tall Grass,” “English And Some Languages I Don’t Speak,” and “Foreigners.”
Ol’ Calvin can elevate everyday stuff into hilarity that makes you laugh out loud. A few titles: “People In Charge,” “Chicken A La King,” The Italian West Indies,” “Thoughts On Power Neck Wear,” “Economics, With Power Steering,” “Voodoo Economics Up Close,” “Social Questions From Aunt Rosie,” “T.S. Eliot And Me,” “Slip Covers Just Bloom In The Spring, Tra La,” “Holistic Heuristics,” “Killer Bagels,” “Molly and the V Chip,” “Losing China,” … the list goes on.
There are other authors I could add to this DNR (Do Not Read In The Middle Of The Night) list. Billy Collins comes to mind in the poetry department. I’m sure you have a list of your own books that if read during the hours in which you’re supposed to be collecting REM, can cause relational distress.
Remedies might include slipping down to the den or garage (where it’s likely your copy has been hidden) when you have the urge to read such books as a dark of night diversion. I could suggest that you never crack open Trillin’s book but caveat emptor. Once you do, it will be too late.
PS If you have doubt about Trillin's sense of humor, watch the clip of Calvin Trillin on The Daily Show. (If I were clever enough, I'd write a poem about it).
More Trillin...
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/09/140338165/an-anthology-and-a-life-full-of-funny-stuff
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/02/24/daily-circuit-calvin-trillin/
and
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/books/review-in-jackson-1964-calvin-trillin-reports-on-race.html
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