It is perhaps fitting that literary journalist Calvin Trillin’s most frequented subjects on which to write are as followed: murder, politics and food. I say this not because the favored topics are so – almost humorously – dissonant, but because Trillin is somewhat of a catch-all kind of writer. The son of an Ukranian Jewish immigrant who later attended Yale, Trillin appears to be a jack-of-all-trades, having at one time or another acted as an essayist, a novelist, a humorist, a poet, and a live performer.
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| Calvin Trillin |
Trillin doesn’t think of himself as a “New Journalist” per se, arguing that the term refers to “someone who feels he doesn’t have to tell the truth, or as someone who believes he can get inside people’s heads and know their thoughts” (Boyton, 2005, p. 401). He admires Joseph Mitchell, but claims admiration only – no influential ties. It must be pointed out, however, that Trillin appears to inhabit some of the classic symptoms of a literary journalist: he’s “informal, frank, human, and ironic” (Kramer, p. 3). Most importantly, perhaps, he has “perfected the art of turning merely ‘interesting’ events into vivid, suspenseful stories” (Boyton, p. 379). Using humor as faithful guide throughout most of his “lighter” pieces, Trillin has a way of gaining the reader’s trust. His self-deprecating, dry wit comes across as both disarming and welcoming. For example, the following excerpt exemplifies this literary technique:
“There was a discussion at my house recently about whether or not I am an uncultured oaf. This is not the first time the subject has come up.
The form these discussions take isn’t what you might assume. It’s not that somebody — one of my daughters, say, or a friend who has dropped by for a drink, or maybe the U.P.S. deliveryman — accuses me of being an uncultured oaf and I defend myself by talking at length about some movie with subtitles that I’ve recently seen. That’s not the way it happens at all — and I don’t just mean that I’d have a different defense, because I haven’t seen a subtitled movie in a long time and had trouble following the plot of the last one I did see. These discussions are not accusatory; they’re more like dispassionate inquiries. Everyone present seems genuinely curious about whether I can be accurately categorized as an uncultured oaf, and no one is more curious about it than I am.” (Trillin, 2009, para. 1-2)
Trillin also leans on humor for his ongoing satirical political poetry for The Nation such as this excerpt from “The Bush Administration in Rhyme”:
Imprisonment and torture are the sort,
of things that might just drive a person daft.
so just in case that happened to McCain,
let’s stick with candidates who dodged the draft. (Trillin, 2004, p. 17)
In addition to humor, Trillin’s writing style is informal and open, peppered with anecdotes about him, his wife, and his two daughters (Boyton, 2005). The author places a lot of weight on the introductory sentence, noting that the first sentence sets the tone for the rest of the piece. In his more serious pieces, such as murder cases, Trillin tends to focus on the narrative, removing himself from the scene and painting a picture of events that read like a fiction novel.
His profound interest in the ordinary and his ability to dice life up into humorous and engaging tidbits is what, perhaps, elevated Trillin to his current status. Aspiring literary journalists could do much worse than to examine the literary career of Calvin Trillin and his witty ways of writing.
Boyton, R. (2005). The new new journalism: Conversations on craft with America’s best nonfiction writers. New York: Vintage Books.
Kramer, M. (1995). Breakable rules for literary journalists. Niemen Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Found Aug. 28, 2010 at: http://niemanstoryboard.us/1995/01/01/breakable-rules-for-literary-journalists/
Trillin, C. (2009) Half an oaf. Found Aug. 28, 2010, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opinion/12trillin.html?_r=1&em
Trillin, C. (2004). Obliviously on he sails: The Bush administration in rhyme. New York: Random House.
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