What We’re Reading: Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin

Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff by Calvin Trillin (Random House, 2011)

Thanks to the dreariness of Minnesota winters, I found myself in need of a laugh this week. Luckily, Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin happened to be sitting on my bookshelf. Thank the gods for that man. The book is a collection of forty years’ worth of his best “funny stuff”: political poems, essays, satirical letters to the editor, reflections on bagels, and much more. Trillin’s impressive background includes being staff writer for The New Yorker, and longtime rib-tickling columnist for The Nation, as their “deadline poet.” He’s written countless books (including bestsellers), most of them on politics and eating. Regardless of what he writes, it always exhibits his trademark wry and witty commentary. And regardless of what I read, I find myself giggling out loud to myself.

Any English major will especially love the section, “English and Some Languages I Don’t Speak,” including the piece “Short Bursts,” in which Trillin digs into mottos and slogans for states, restaurants, and political campaigns (in which he gives the Midwest a regional motto of “No Big Deal”), and “Like a Scholar of Teenspeak” (those damn kids, and their overuse of “like”…). Another of my favorite sections, entitled “The Years with Navasky,” chronicles (and ridicules) his years as a column writer for The Nation, in which he had the motto was seemingly to attack his editor Navasky when all else fails.

Trillin’s humor isn’t trying to be sly, but rather has a quirky, dry, yet open approach to all things funny. He, like most humorists, isn’t above poking fun at himself, or anyone else for that matter. This is shown in the stand-out piece from the book (in my opinion) called “My Tuxedo,” in which Trillin laments that he is “often mistaken for the sort of person who does not own a tuxedo.”

Trillin is someone who is hard to summarize or re-tell; problem is, he tells it best himself. So just do yourself a favor, and go to your nearest (indie) bookstore and grab your own copy!

What intellectually humorous writers do you follow? Have you read Trillin’s work? If so, which book/essay/poem takes the cake as most memorable?