Calvin Loved Alice
OK, so it's almost 2 in the morning, my stomach is killing me, and I have to get up in six hours to start a new job. Oh, and the team I spent 700 words excoriating on Friday just won the Super Bowl.
Two weeks until pitchers and catchers report. As Calvin Trillin would say, everything else is just commentary.
Speaking of which, I finished his most recent book tonight, which is to say I read the whole thing tonight. About Alice is 90 pages long. Double spaced. With chapter breaks and a lengthy indented quote at the beginning of each one. It's a pamphlet, basically. God, but what a pamphlet.
It's a barely expanded version of an essay that Trillin wrote for The New Yorker about his late wife, who died of complications from lung cancer on September 11, 2001. In a nutshell, it's a love story about a beautiful shiksa and the nice Jewish guy who kept trying to impress her for their entire 35 year marriage. And cancer.
I don't want to ruin it for anyone--that paragraph above is half the length of the first chapter--but it's a terrific read. Funny, of course, because it's Trillin, but also sweet and light and sad at the same time. It would have to be at the same time, because if I haven't mentioned it, this is a very short book.
Buy it here. Give it to someone else. Repeat.
Two weeks until pitchers and catchers report. As Calvin Trillin would say, everything else is just commentary.
Speaking of which, I finished his most recent book tonight, which is to say I read the whole thing tonight. About Alice is 90 pages long. Double spaced. With chapter breaks and a lengthy indented quote at the beginning of each one. It's a pamphlet, basically. God, but what a pamphlet.
It's a barely expanded version of an essay that Trillin wrote for The New Yorker about his late wife, who died of complications from lung cancer on September 11, 2001. In a nutshell, it's a love story about a beautiful shiksa and the nice Jewish guy who kept trying to impress her for their entire 35 year marriage. And cancer.
I don't want to ruin it for anyone--that paragraph above is half the length of the first chapter--but it's a terrific read. Funny, of course, because it's Trillin, but also sweet and light and sad at the same time. It would have to be at the same time, because if I haven't mentioned it, this is a very short book.
Buy it here. Give it to someone else. Repeat.
posted by Matthew at 1:50 AM
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