Today is the 85th birthday of Calvin Trillin, the American journalist and humorist who writes about food, sexy carwashes, how to find a parking spot in Manhattan, and seat belts for dogs. When asked about being funny, he replied, “I always thought of writing humor as some sort of little, weird thing that I could do in the way some people could play the piano.”
Trillin was born in Kansas City. His father was a grocer who wanted Trillin to be president someday, but Trillin preferred to daydream about being a disc jockey. He admits he didn’t read much as kid, but at Yale University he became the chairman of the Yale Daily News and later covered civil rights for Time before becoming a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he stayed for more than 40 years. Trillin writes most often about American politics, culture, and food. One critic said, “Trillin is to food writing what Chaplin was to film acting.”
Trillin writes a short column for The Nation called “Deadline Poet,” in which he pokes fun at politics and politicians. He once wrote. . .a short poem about Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign: “So if playing the “woman card” really / Is entrenched now in Hillary’s plans, / She’s a bargain: Her president’s paycheck / Will be 10 percent less than a man’s.”
Calvin Trillin once wrote about a chicken in Chinatown who could beat humans at games of tic-tac-toe. His latest book is Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America (2016).
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