New Calvin Trillin book

At Unabridged Bookstore yesterday, I discovered a new book the existence of which I'd been totally unaware. (That's one of the great things about Unabridged.) It's called "About Alice," by Calvin Trillin, and it's a short book memorializing Trillin's deceased wife. I know I'm not alone here in having read everything Calvin Trillin has ever written, so I also know I'm not alone in wanting to read this one. Everything about the book (from its cover typography, to the design of the text, to the very shape and size of the book, to the back cover photograph of a young Calvin and Alice walking hand in hand) is beautiful--I'm getting verklempt before even reading a word. I knew that if you didn't know about it (as I didn't, before yesterday), you'd want to.

I read the book in one sitting last night. (More accurately, one lying, since I read it in bed before turning out the light.) I think it's one of the best books Trillin has ever written. He sets out to correct the caricature of Alice that he's drawn in all his previous books, most particularly his food books. He says that this Alice was no better than the "sitcom version" of his wife; there's a sense of atonement in the new book, a sense that Trillin feels he owes it to Alice to paint a fuller portrait. By book's end, I felt I knew the real Alice, and--granted that there might be some idealization going on in Trillin's new portrayal of her--I felt as in love with her as Trillin did. (And does.)

By the way, the photo on the back of the book--taken of Trillin and Alice just after they were married in London in 1965--shows a person as beautiful on the outside as she was within. Alice wasn't merely attractive, she was flat-out gorgeous, a knock-out. I never knew that.

riddlemay,

I read a shorter version of this story in The New Yorker, and found it interesting from several perspectives, primarily as it relates how handy it is to use one's spouse as a foil when writing about food. We married folks take most of our meals with our beloved spouses, and we tend to talk about food when we eat. My opinions about food are frequently either reinforced by, or formed in opposition to, those of The Wife.

Years ago, I pitched a column to a local paper called "Dining with Dick and Dee Dee." The premise was that it would be written in dramatic dialogue format, and would dramatize a conversation between a couple who often go out to eat but don't agree on anything.

David "Still pitchin'" Hammond