Word: trillin
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NONFICTION: Charles de Gaulle, Don Cook ∙ The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, edited by Robert Kimball E.B. White: A Biography, Scott Elledge ∙ Killings, Calvin Trillin Mayor, Edward I. Koch ∙ Tales from the Secret Annex, Anne Frank
...Marco Polo of Junk Food, as he is known to awestruck lesser feeders, is renowned for his courageous researches into such regional American delicacies as barbecued chicken wings and Philadelphia cheese steaks. Here he is on a less eupeptic journey. We may assume that Calvin Trillin occasionally takes on a plateful of crab cakes or refried beans, but only as fuel. As his title indicates, this time Topic A is violent death...
...franchise is broad but unclear. A newspaper routinely covers the murders in its area if the central characters are celebrated or the crimes gaudy, and offers a selection of corpses from afar if both conditions are met. Duty requires this; the news must be reported, however disgustingly fascinating. Trillin is under no such absolving obligation...
...piece of short fiction involving a crime usually leaves the reader with a solution of sorts to hold in his hand. Trillin's narratives often leave no more than a handful of smoke. In an odd way this takes the curse off what is really voyeurism. For a dozen pages or more, the reader sees so closely that he wants to excuse himself, to clear his throat so the figures in the drama will know he is there. Then the curtain closes abruptly, and he is left to brood about why psychological insulation burned through at just such...
...Trillin writes with skill and economy. He plays fair and never invents quotes or deals in the shabbiness of composite characters. He never claims too much for his conundrums and does not speculate for half a sentence too long about where the truth may lie. A single reservation is in the matter of scale. In The New Yorker, these articles seemed exhaustive; in the book, some of them are disappointingly brief. The same illusion of time slowed and prose made denser is observable in even the best of the magazine's longer fact articles, which can seem interminable when...