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Calvin Trillin

The New Yorker

#8 in Social Issues

Description: Calvin Trillin is a staff writer for the New Yorker.

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2 Reviews for Calvin Trillin

By MichaelHannah

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A really brillian and extra ordinary carreer

October 02, 2009

He writes about almost everything. For more than 40
years he has been providing exquisite reading material
for the readers. His elegant and polished style makes
it absorbing. He has a subtile humor
that makes his works more readable.

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By bhwalker

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A delicious smorgasbord of humor, memoir, and social
commentary

May 14, 2009

A New Yorker staff member since 1963, Calvin Trillin
hearkens back to the magazine's venerable past while
remaining relevant and vital to its present. A
remarkably versatile writer, Trillin is perhaps best
known for his food and travel writing. But he also
ventures on occasion into more politically loaded
terrain. In one feature that appeared in the magazine
in 2008, Trillin entertainingly dissected the London
mayoral race, bringing the candidates to vividly
eccentric life. He has also addressed controversial
issues, such as race relations in middle-class America,
as in a piece that chronicled the events leading up to
a race-charged murder trial in Long Island. Trillin is
also known for his political humor, often spouting
verse that gently, or not so gently, roasts government
officials and election candidates. As a political
humorist, though, Trillin manages to steer away from
aggressive bias. It's not hard to glean that Trillin
is a liberal. However, his ribbing of politicians is
decidedly non-partisan. There is an element of satire
in his work, but there is none of the condemnatory
self-righteousness that often drains the fun out of
lesser attempts at poltiical comedy. One gets the
sense that Trillin tweaks the likes of George W. Bush
and Hillary Clinton more for the fun of it than to
serve a particular agenda. Trillin's credentials as a
reporter are unassailable, but he is perhaps at his
best when he engages in personal narrative writing.
Trillin's wife and children have frequently served as
supporting characters in his food and travel writing.
When Trillin's wife Alice died in 2001, many of
Trillin's devoted readers felt as though they had lost
someone they had known personally. Trillin paid
tribute to Alice in a touching memoir in the New
Yorker, which stands perhaps as Trillin's most
successful autobiographical work to date.