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About Alice
In Calvin Trillin’s antic tales of family life, she was portrayed as the wife who had “a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day” and the mother who thought that if you didn’t go to every performance of your child’s school play, “the county would come and take the child.” Now, five years after her death, her husband offers this loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page, an educator who was equally at home teaching at a university or a drug treatment center, a gifted writer, a stunningly beautiful and thoroughly engaged woman who, in the words of a friend, “managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in.”
Though it deals with devastating loss, About Alice is also a love story, chronicling a romance that began at a Manhattan party when Calvin Trillin desperately tried to impress a young woman who “seemed to glow."
You have never again been as funny as you were that night, Alice would say, twenty or thirty years later.
You mean I peaked in December of 1963?
I’m afraid so.
But he never quit trying to impress her. In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse. The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, “I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice.”
In that spirit, Calvin Trillin has, with About Alice, created a gift to the wife he adored and to his readers.
Though it deals with devastating loss, About Alice is also a love story, chronicling a romance that began at a Manhattan party when Calvin Trillin desperately tried to impress a young woman who “seemed to glow."
You have never again been as funny as you were that night, Alice would say, twenty or thirty years later.
You mean I peaked in December of 1963?
I’m afraid so.
But he never quit trying to impress her. In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse. The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, “I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice.”
In that spirit, Calvin Trillin has, with About Alice, created a gift to the wife he adored and to his readers.
78 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Calvin Trillin
73 books272 followersCalvin (Bud) Marshall Trillin is an American journalist, humorist, and novelist. He is best known for his humorous writings about food and eating, but he has also written much serious journalism, comic verse, and several books of fiction.
Trillin attended public schools in Kansas City and went on to Yale University, where he served as chairman of the Yale Daily News and became a member of Scroll and Key before graduating in 1957; he later served as a trustee of the university. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he worked as a reporter for Time magazine before joining the staff of The New Yorker in 1963. His reporting for The New Yorker on the racial integration of the University of Georgia was published in his first book, An Education in Georgia. He wrote the magazine's "U.S. Journal" series from 1967 to 1982, covering local events both serious and quirky throughout the United States.
Trillin attended public schools in Kansas City and went on to Yale University, where he served as chairman of the Yale Daily News and became a member of Scroll and Key before graduating in 1957; he later served as a trustee of the university. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he worked as a reporter for Time magazine before joining the staff of The New Yorker in 1963. His reporting for The New Yorker on the racial integration of the University of Georgia was published in his first book, An Education in Georgia. He wrote the magazine's "U.S. Journal" series from 1967 to 1982, covering local events both serious and quirky throughout the United States.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 816 reviews
May 7, 2007
When About Alice first appeared as an essay in The New Yorker last year, I remember missing my train stop because I was so engrossed by Trillin’s eulogy and love letter to his late wife. Trillin opens his heart and home to readers as he chronicles his relationship with Alice from their first chance meeting at a party, to their final good-bye when cancer claimed her life after a 20-year remission. Trillin has written about Alice in other books (which I have not read), and he admits that those portrayals may not have been altogether accurate, much to Alice’s amusement. In memoriam, he decides to come clean about the well-heeled woman who inspired his life and much of his work. He still paints scenes of their marriage with a broad-humored brushstroke, but Trillin is careful not to edit the ebbs and flows of their relationship, including his wife’s battle and public crusade against lung cancer.
The book is both sad and celebratory: you feel this widower’s loss deeply, yet he provides hope for all readers that a relationship such as theirs—one of interdependence of minds and hearts—is very possible, and not simply the stuff of fiction or something from a bygone era. For most of the book, Trillin portrays himself as a schlub who lucked out by winning over the whip-smart and always poised Alice. He claims his writing was a means to continually impress her, yet you get the sense that he needn’t have tried so hard: Alice didn’t commit to anything she didn’t feel strongly about.
The book is both sad and celebratory: you feel this widower’s loss deeply, yet he provides hope for all readers that a relationship such as theirs—one of interdependence of minds and hearts—is very possible, and not simply the stuff of fiction or something from a bygone era. For most of the book, Trillin portrays himself as a schlub who lucked out by winning over the whip-smart and always poised Alice. He claims his writing was a means to continually impress her, yet you get the sense that he needn’t have tried so hard: Alice didn’t commit to anything she didn’t feel strongly about.
January 5, 2016
"We are so lucky."
This is a heartwarming paean of love and gratitude to his wife, who had died five years earlier.
It's not sad or depressing, it is an uplifting and inspirational celebration of her as wife, mother, and very much as her own wonderful self.
Count your blessings and enjoy everything, I think that's the message.
This is a heartwarming paean of love and gratitude to his wife, who had died five years earlier.
It's not sad or depressing, it is an uplifting and inspirational celebration of her as wife, mother, and very much as her own wonderful self.
Count your blessings and enjoy everything, I think that's the message.
January 12, 2020
Trillin originally wrote this memoir of his wife Alice as a New Yorker piece five years after her untimely death in 2001, and later expanded it into this short book. The cardiac arrest that claimed her was the result of damage from radiation that successfully treated her lung cancer twenty five years earlier. While the medical history is briefly outlined, Trillin focuses more on how the couple dealt pretty stoically with their fears and feelings of anger at the unfairness of life, and on how their heightened awareness of mortality helped them enjoy the time they spent together. A few months before her death, Alice was released from the hospital after a bypass operation just in time to attend a daughter's wedding. The next day, she sent an e-mail to a group of friends.
Toward the end of the e-mail, she said she was safe at home, in the Village, eating comfort food and about to watch The Sopranos and an A. R. Gurney play on television. She closed by saying, "Life doesn't get much better than this."Trillin clearly adored Alice and, throughout, he proudly describes her many virtues and accomplishments as an educator, writer, editor and muse to her husband, and, most important to her, mother.
June 5, 2009
Every once in a while we’re reminded that bad things can happen to good people. The good people in this case are Calvin, the writer, and his dearly departed wife, Alice. As you might expect from a loving tribute, pedestals and pathos are intrinsic. The earnest Trillin, smitten to the core, did his best to make her real, but still may have crossed into too-good-to-be-true territory. In a way, I had hoped for as much. Devotion suits him. Other things I’d read made him seem like such a pleasant fellow: humorous without trying too hard (in contrast to, say, Dave Barry), ironic without seeming smug (unlike many post-modern types), and self-deprecating without being disingenuous (unlike me, for instance (I say with what I hope is the right kind of irony)). In a piece like this, he had to veer a few degrees away from his usual drollery and light touch. He still came across as a mensch, but a sadder one given his loss.
To hear him tell it, Alice was too good for him. She was smart, attractive, classy, and kind. He mentioned how when he first met her at a party, at the apex of his own charm and wit, she seemed to him to glow. In the scant seventy some pages that followed, he shared a handful of stories about their family life together. They were, to use the most precise word I can think of, nice – simple and spare with no hint of pretense or deeper understanding. I just wish there were more. Come to think of it, that’s what Trillin himself would have wanted.
To hear him tell it, Alice was too good for him. She was smart, attractive, classy, and kind. He mentioned how when he first met her at a party, at the apex of his own charm and wit, she seemed to him to glow. In the scant seventy some pages that followed, he shared a handful of stories about their family life together. They were, to use the most precise word I can think of, nice – simple and spare with no hint of pretense or deeper understanding. I just wish there were more. Come to think of it, that’s what Trillin himself would have wanted.
January 7, 2009
What I learned from this book? If you are walking down the street and, against all odds, just happened to get hit on the head with a flower pot, you need to get the flower pot off your head and keep walking.
This is a charming book that I just heard in audio form--read by the author. That is a special treat, I think, for this tribute. Trillin is so funny and loving about his late wife, who I certanily did not know. But I wish I had.
This is a charming book that I just heard in audio form--read by the author. That is a special treat, I think, for this tribute. Trillin is so funny and loving about his late wife, who I certanily did not know. But I wish I had.
April 30, 2024
Seems like I'm on the grief memoir train this month: first Alexandra Fuller's book about her son, Fi, and now Calvin Trillin's memoir about his wife. Trillin's book is excellent, a fine evocation of Alice Trillin. It is the tribute we would all hope for, and beautifully written. It is clear that he loved her deeply, and his anecdotes about her reveal an amazing woman, smart, funny, beautiful, kind.
May 12, 2020
Maybe I should give this three stars, but if someone asked me how it was, I'd have to say, "It was OK."
On the one hand it is a poignant eulogy for the author's late wife, really more like an elegy in that it is like reading a love poem. On the other hand, I did not find his wife's attributes all that sympathetic.
Calvin Trillin is a writer for the New Yorker. His wife, Alice, served as his muse and the subject of many of his articles. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1976, but battled it until she passed away from heart failure in 2001. Her death was largely overlooked by the media due to her passing being on the same day as the 9/11 attacks.
I did enjoy reading this book in that Trillin's love for his wife effuses from every page. She was outspoken, opinionated, went out for the things she believed in fighting for and unapologetically lived as she pleased.
This is all well and good. The above paragraph would be a fair description of me. And maybe it's my own strong opinions that caused me to dislike Alice, in spite of her husband's tender remembrances.
All of her opinions, while lauded by her husband for their bravery and altruism, stayed firmly inside the bounds of popular causes. You could have replaced Alice with any celebrity and the politics, charities, etc...would have been the same.
She wished she could impose an "Alice Tax". A tax that would force people to live modestly. She doesn't clearly define what she means by modest. She lived in a brownstone in Greenwich Village. Most Americans could not afford to live within an hour's radius of New York City. And she kept an expensive wardrobe...and complained when her husband booked them in a small hotel while they were in Japan. Like most rich people who think we should give all our money to the government so they can redistribute it to the poor, like congress, she conveniently excludes herself from the practical application of her ideologies.
If every person who believed in redistribution, especially rich celebrity types, gave everything they owned away to the poor, I would take them seriously.
But to be fair, she worked hard to provide colleges with remedial classes so that students coming from underachieving schools would be able to catch up and then acquire a college education. She also devoted much of her time to camps for disabled and terminally ill children.
She was devoted to her family. Her daughters were her priority. Obviously she was a good wife to have a husband who was devoted to her for thirty-six years and who writes of her in 2006 as if it were still 1965.
I think books like this serve as a catharsis for the writer. It enables them to organize their thoughts about someone very important to them and also provides a way to relive the beautiful moments.
On the one hand it is a poignant eulogy for the author's late wife, really more like an elegy in that it is like reading a love poem. On the other hand, I did not find his wife's attributes all that sympathetic.
Calvin Trillin is a writer for the New Yorker. His wife, Alice, served as his muse and the subject of many of his articles. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1976, but battled it until she passed away from heart failure in 2001. Her death was largely overlooked by the media due to her passing being on the same day as the 9/11 attacks.
I did enjoy reading this book in that Trillin's love for his wife effuses from every page. She was outspoken, opinionated, went out for the things she believed in fighting for and unapologetically lived as she pleased.
This is all well and good. The above paragraph would be a fair description of me. And maybe it's my own strong opinions that caused me to dislike Alice, in spite of her husband's tender remembrances.
All of her opinions, while lauded by her husband for their bravery and altruism, stayed firmly inside the bounds of popular causes. You could have replaced Alice with any celebrity and the politics, charities, etc...would have been the same.
She wished she could impose an "Alice Tax". A tax that would force people to live modestly. She doesn't clearly define what she means by modest. She lived in a brownstone in Greenwich Village. Most Americans could not afford to live within an hour's radius of New York City. And she kept an expensive wardrobe...and complained when her husband booked them in a small hotel while they were in Japan. Like most rich people who think we should give all our money to the government so they can redistribute it to the poor, like congress, she conveniently excludes herself from the practical application of her ideologies.
If every person who believed in redistribution, especially rich celebrity types, gave everything they owned away to the poor, I would take them seriously.
But to be fair, she worked hard to provide colleges with remedial classes so that students coming from underachieving schools would be able to catch up and then acquire a college education. She also devoted much of her time to camps for disabled and terminally ill children.
She was devoted to her family. Her daughters were her priority. Obviously she was a good wife to have a husband who was devoted to her for thirty-six years and who writes of her in 2006 as if it were still 1965.
I think books like this serve as a catharsis for the writer. It enables them to organize their thoughts about someone very important to them and also provides a way to relive the beautiful moments.
June 17, 2008
This is a marvelous little book. It's a love letter to Trillin's wife, Alice, who died of heart failure in 2001.
It's filled with funny and touching anecdotes about their life together. My favorite moment is when Alice was convinced she lost her looks because she couldn't get out of a speeding ticket. Trillin tries to convince her that it's really because there's been an influx of gay police officers. "Of course we're all in favor of that," Trillin said, "but it's bound to change the equation."
And Alice smiled.
It's filled with funny and touching anecdotes about their life together. My favorite moment is when Alice was convinced she lost her looks because she couldn't get out of a speeding ticket. Trillin tries to convince her that it's really because there's been an influx of gay police officers. "Of course we're all in favor of that," Trillin said, "but it's bound to change the equation."
And Alice smiled.
July 10, 2013
Everyone has to define for themselves what it means to live a successful life. If my husband feels the mix of admiration, love and deep sadness when I die that Calvin Trillin reveals feeling on the death of his wife Alice, I will have succeeded in life in one big important way. The love, admiration and sadness are not because he was blind to her quirks or because they never disagreed or because she was always right. That makes this little memoir even better. May we all, as one friend said of her, learn how to "navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in." (Side note: I read this little book in one sitting on my lunch break at work. Just goes to show that profundity doesn't always require lots of words.)
October 29, 2007
This book was critically acclaimed, and I read it on the recommendations of magazine and newspaper reviewers.
I didn't think it lived up to the acclaim.
The book is a postscript to the author's other writings about his beloved wife, Alice, who passed away last year. Calvin had written about Alice for years; indeed, the vast majority of his work apparently centered around his deep-felt love for this woman.
Only I've never read any of his other writings.
So while this little book was a sweet tribute, and Alice seemed like a neat lady that I would've greatly enjoyed knowing... I don't know. It wasn't magical for me. I didn't really have the back-story.
I didn't think it lived up to the acclaim.
The book is a postscript to the author's other writings about his beloved wife, Alice, who passed away last year. Calvin had written about Alice for years; indeed, the vast majority of his work apparently centered around his deep-felt love for this woman.
Only I've never read any of his other writings.
So while this little book was a sweet tribute, and Alice seemed like a neat lady that I would've greatly enjoyed knowing... I don't know. It wasn't magical for me. I didn't really have the back-story.
January 13, 2014
The "Alice" in question in the memoir, About Alice is Alice Trillin, wife and muse of Calvin Trillin, the author of this book. I had never read anything that this famous New Yorker author had written so I was unfamiliar with this woman who is such an important character in some of his other books about his family life. Yes, she was a real-life woman who had a life, raised two girls, was an English professor and the author is heart-broken at her death of cancer in mid-life. It is a terrible tragedy. Cancer always sucks. The problem with this memoir is that I did not get much of a sense of Alice Trillin as a fully developed character. The author portrayed her firmly poised on a pedestal and then told anecdotes that really weren't all that flattering. She seemed to actually appear shallow, which I am quite sure was just the opposite of his intention.
The book is only 78 pages long. It's long enough to convey how absolutely bereft the author is at the loss of his beloved wife. It may also be long enough for those that are familiar with this writer and his previous books chronicling their family life, but I did not get all the details I needed for the whole story, and I wanted the whole story. I think that he may have written this book too soon and in his grief, was unable to write too much about it. It's totally understandable, but I was disappointed. He goes into quite a lot of detail about how beautiful she was and what I wanted to hear about was the deeper stuff. For those readers that are familiar with this author and have followed along with his other books it would be enough, but I was left with a lot of holes I could not fill.
The book is only 78 pages long. It's long enough to convey how absolutely bereft the author is at the loss of his beloved wife. It may also be long enough for those that are familiar with this writer and his previous books chronicling their family life, but I did not get all the details I needed for the whole story, and I wanted the whole story. I think that he may have written this book too soon and in his grief, was unable to write too much about it. It's totally understandable, but I was disappointed. He goes into quite a lot of detail about how beautiful she was and what I wanted to hear about was the deeper stuff. For those readers that are familiar with this author and have followed along with his other books it would be enough, but I was left with a lot of holes I could not fill.
March 23, 2008
I read this when it was published in the New Yorker. It is an amazing remembrance of Alice, Calvin Trillin's wife and muse, who died of heart failure in New York City on September 11, 2001. When I saw the book on amazon.com, it said it was expanded. So I'll have to re-read it to see what else he's added.
I've only saved two editions of The New Yorker since I started reading it over 20 years ago. The first was the first post 9/11 edition with the black-on-black Art Spiegelman cover, and the other was the edition from the spring of 2006 that has this story in it.
After finishing this book, there are a couple light chapters toward the end that were probably edited from The New Yorker piece for clarity (at least I didn't remember them in The New Yorker, so I assume that they are new). They illuminate the woman more than the writer, and aren't as pitch perfect as the rest of the book. Still, I am richer for having read them.
I've only saved two editions of The New Yorker since I started reading it over 20 years ago. The first was the first post 9/11 edition with the black-on-black Art Spiegelman cover, and the other was the edition from the spring of 2006 that has this story in it.
After finishing this book, there are a couple light chapters toward the end that were probably edited from The New Yorker piece for clarity (at least I didn't remember them in The New Yorker, so I assume that they are new). They illuminate the woman more than the writer, and aren't as pitch perfect as the rest of the book. Still, I am richer for having read them.
September 8, 2011
I'd heard of this when it came out, but it seemed far, far too sad to even think about. But then tonight I got home from work, went down to the laundry room to throw in some laundry, and noticed someone had left a new stash of books on the communal shelf and this was among them.
By the rinse cycle, I was weeping in the doorway of my building's laundry room. I came up to my apartment to finish the whole thing, and my clothes are still in the dryer right now. (Yes. This is a short book.)
"About Alice" is a perfect little monument. Every moment is incredibly full of love -- Mr. Trillin's for Alice, primarily, and theirs for their children. The key, though, is the absolute feeling that, were the situation reversed, she'd have written the same book for him.
And what more could anyone ask for?
By the rinse cycle, I was weeping in the doorway of my building's laundry room. I came up to my apartment to finish the whole thing, and my clothes are still in the dryer right now. (Yes. This is a short book.)
"About Alice" is a perfect little monument. Every moment is incredibly full of love -- Mr. Trillin's for Alice, primarily, and theirs for their children. The key, though, is the absolute feeling that, were the situation reversed, she'd have written the same book for him.
And what more could anyone ask for?
March 15, 2008
A delicious offering to his late wife and their life together, I tried hard to finish Calvin Trillin's book in a single reading and managed to space it out over three days.
It is a compact tome, with chapters representing themes that repeated throughout some 36 years of marriage. There is not one wasted word. As has been my experience with other books by Trillin, his humor made me smile, sometimes through tears. In this entry, it extends to their friends, including Trillin's account of Nora Ephron's contribution to Alice Trillin's memorial service. First diagnosed with cancer when their daughters were 4 and 7, Alice lived 25 more years, with flair. The richness of her life is lovingly celebrated in this book.
It is a compact tome, with chapters representing themes that repeated throughout some 36 years of marriage. There is not one wasted word. As has been my experience with other books by Trillin, his humor made me smile, sometimes through tears. In this entry, it extends to their friends, including Trillin's account of Nora Ephron's contribution to Alice Trillin's memorial service. First diagnosed with cancer when their daughters were 4 and 7, Alice lived 25 more years, with flair. The richness of her life is lovingly celebrated in this book.
January 17, 2015
I haven't read much of Trillin's previous work, so I'm sure this book didn't have the same effect on me that it would have on someone who has come to know Alice through Calvin's words. Trillin was so charming when I heard him on The Diane Rehm Show, though, that I just had to read this book, a 77-page reflection written after the death of his wife. I picked up the book and read it in one sitting, on the floor of the psychology section at Borders. Don't be fooled, though; the beauty of this book is in its brevity. Trillin's love for his wife shines through and yet it never feels as though he's trying to convince you of it.
July 9, 2017
Since I was unfamiliar with the author and his wife, this book did not resonate with me at all. It’s possible that those who are familiar with the author’s writings may enjoy it. Not me. At first, I liked how much he missed and loved his wife. As the book progressed, I didn’t particularly care for the name dropping and the perfect life – perfect wife, perfect daughters, everyone’s beautiful, Ivy League, you get the idea. I’m sure that there are people like that. In fact, I’ve met a few, but it’s not exactly what I wanted to read about. I felt that this memoir didn’t have much depth.
November 8, 2007
The lumpy throat started on page 6 (of this very short book, which is article length) when Calvin Trillin was recalling how he got a lot of letters from his readers about Alice, although they had never met her, but knew her only through his writing - like the letter from a young woman who "sometimes looked at her boyfriend and thought, 'But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?'"
April 17, 2021
Back in 1982--a lifetime ago--we moved to Kansas City, MO from western New York and ended up living close to where Calvin Trillin went to and graduated from high school. He was known for his writing then, was famous as a local boy made good, and in 1983 he wrote a hugely long but very informative New Yorker column on the American Royale, an annual horse show that was held in Kansas City at the time and even in 1983 seemed a bit of an anachronism. That column really solidified for me the identity quandary of Kansas City we noticed upon moving there--too far north geographically to be southern, too far south to be northern, to far west to be eastern, and too far east to be western-- and I still have that copy of the article in my files.
Because he was on our radar, his food books (American Fried, Alice, Let's Eat and Third Helpings) many of which covered iconic restaurants in Kansas City, were devoured and laughed at. They definitely included stories about his wife. She was singular, Calvin adored her, and they seemed to have had a very happy life together. This brief book is his tribute to her after she died. I read it when it first came out, given to me by my husband. When I came across it recently while weeding my shelves, I decided to sit right down and read it again. It was as lovely this time as the first time. It's a very short read, and anyone who has enjoyed Trillin's writings in the New Yorker or the Nation or his books would relish this. We all should have someone who could love and describe us in our marriages as Calvin did Alice.
Because he was on our radar, his food books (American Fried, Alice, Let's Eat and Third Helpings) many of which covered iconic restaurants in Kansas City, were devoured and laughed at. They definitely included stories about his wife. She was singular, Calvin adored her, and they seemed to have had a very happy life together. This brief book is his tribute to her after she died. I read it when it first came out, given to me by my husband. When I came across it recently while weeding my shelves, I decided to sit right down and read it again. It was as lovely this time as the first time. It's a very short read, and anyone who has enjoyed Trillin's writings in the New Yorker or the Nation or his books would relish this. We all should have someone who could love and describe us in our marriages as Calvin did Alice.
August 22, 2020
This is a heart-warming, brief memoir devoted to the author's wife, Alice. Trillin was deeply in love and devoted to his wife. Unfortunately, I'm not really that familiar with the author's writing and his other novels that seem to celebrate his wife. Alice tragically died from cancer and this book is to honor her life. I enjoyed the stories about her independence and how she lived life her way. The author seemed very grateful and very devoted to his wife. They seemed to live a charmed life in the height of society, which lots of famous people. He describes her as extremely beautiful and a talented professor....and someone he loved dearly.
November 21, 2023
This short collection of memories captured some of the thoughts and emotions I’ve felt in the past few years as my family has gone through our own health scares…and it is truly a gift to have them in my mind to tell me I’m not alone in the way my own humanity works in the face of the illness of a loved one. At its’ core, Trillin is celebrating a treasure trove of the memories that make up a happy life with his wife. He’s reminding readers to focus on all the big and small moments that make these scares and struggles that age us beyond ourselves worth it.
May 15, 2023
Calvin Trillin has written the most heart felt dedication and public love letter to his late wife in his memoir, “About Alice”. For all who read this beautiful memoir, and after you’ve dried away your last tear, perhaps your first thought will be like mine, “Don’t we all wish everyone could be loved like Alice?!”.
A short beautiful read, highly recommended.
A short beautiful read, highly recommended.
February 24, 2020
Lovingly written book about the author's wife Alice. Charming, beautiful, and intelligent, Alice was a one on a million. Just read it, you will be blessed by her spirit, her marriage, and her heart .
August 31, 2022
Delightfully written portrait of a remarkable lady and a remarkable marriage between two literary stars. I would liked to have known Alice, enjoying her radiance and wit over dinner with her friends and remarkable family.
April 12, 2023
The only reason it’s a 2 instead of a 3 or 4 star is because I haven’t read any of this author’s other books so my connection with Alice probably wasn’t as strong as someone who has read all of his other books. That being said, this was such a beautiful tribute to his wife and loved the stories/way he spoke about her
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May 8, 2022Beautiful little tribute. How wonderful to be so lovely, and how wonderful to have been so loved!
June 8, 2018
This is an ode written by a man who lost his one true love to cancer. Calvin claimed that he wrote everything for Alice, and you can tell he meant that. The love he felt for her really jumped off the pages, and broke your heart at the end. It was truly a touching read.
August 23, 2010
New Yorker staff writer Calvin Trillin is the only author I know who could write an entire novel about something as pedestrian as finding a parking space in New York City (Tepper Isn’t Going Out, Random House, 2002). The magic of Tepper is really in the relationship between the curmudgeony protagonist – who refuses to move his car once he’s found the perfect spot – and his assertive wife, who lovingly tolerates his idiosyncrasies. After reading Trillin’s wonderful memoir About Alice (Random House, 2006), it is clear that the marriages which the author creates in his fiction are based on his own beautiful and quirky relationship with his wife, Alice, for whom (as he admits in the dedication to Tepper) “ctually, I wrote everything.”
In About Alice, the self-professed nerdy and socially awkward Calvin “Bud” Trillin chronicles his 35-year marriage to the beautiful, confident, and uber-assertive Alice. (In one scene, she asks New York governor George Pataki, after hearing him expound upon his quite modest upbringing, “Why in the world are you a Republican?”) The couple’s sometime diametrically opposed personalities drive their marriage: they are even introduced at a conference of fellow English teachers with the line, “Alice and Bud are like Burns and Allen, except she’s George and he’s Gracie.”
Their differences clearly define them. Over the course of their relationship, Bud’s predilection for saving verges on miserliness; Alice “liked to travel, and she loved beautiful clothes. She liked living in nice surroundings.” He begins trying to impress her with his corny humor on the night they first met; she suggests “he peaked” that night in 1963, and that he has never been as funny since. (I’m pretty sure my own assertive wife has told me something similar on more than one occasion.)
Despite Alice’s high standards, Trillin heartwarmingly admits that he never stopped trying to impress her. He reveals that all of his books were written with her in mind, and that the only reason Tepper ever even was sent to a publisher was that she found it funny. He kids with her about her reckless driving, and suggests that the only reason she never got speeding tickets was her breathtaking beauty. (When Alice, at the age of 61, laments that she has finally gotten a speeding ticket because she is no longer beautiful, Trillin quips, “I hear they’re taking in a lot of gay cops these days…We’re all in favor of that, of course, but it’s bound to change the whole equation.”) Trillin writes about how Alice never missed a single school play starring her children, how she quit a well-paying job to teach English to convicts at Sing-Sing, how she could have been a model but instead chose to be a teacher and a writer. Through it all, the reader feels the extraordinary love the author has for his wife.
When Alice becomes ill with lung cancer – though she had never smoked a cigarette in her life – the book takes on the melancholy tone of two other great literary works: Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking and John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. (Indeed, at times Trillin’s words echo Irving’s final words in Owen Meany: “Oh God – please give him back! I shall keep asking you.”) But the portrait which Trillin paints of his Alice suggests that she would be distraught with the thought of him (or any reader) mourning her death; instead, he tells us, she would probably say “I’m so lucky” to have lived the years she did.
About Alice is a very quick read, and it is a more than worthwhile one. In one chapter, Trillin even reveals how Alice discovered “the secret of life,” but you’ll have to read the book to know what that is. And when you do read the book, you’ll see why one of the Trillin children called her mom “the coolest girl I ever knew.” And if your experience of reading the book is anything like mine, you’ll be moved. Trillin recounts how he received a letter from a young woman who “sometimes looked at her boyfriend and thought, ‘But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?’” Reading this book made me want to make sure that I show my own wife – despite our different personalities – the same type of pure love that Calvin showed Alice during their 35-year marriage.
In About Alice, the self-professed nerdy and socially awkward Calvin “Bud” Trillin chronicles his 35-year marriage to the beautiful, confident, and uber-assertive Alice. (In one scene, she asks New York governor George Pataki, after hearing him expound upon his quite modest upbringing, “Why in the world are you a Republican?”) The couple’s sometime diametrically opposed personalities drive their marriage: they are even introduced at a conference of fellow English teachers with the line, “Alice and Bud are like Burns and Allen, except she’s George and he’s Gracie.”
Their differences clearly define them. Over the course of their relationship, Bud’s predilection for saving verges on miserliness; Alice “liked to travel, and she loved beautiful clothes. She liked living in nice surroundings.” He begins trying to impress her with his corny humor on the night they first met; she suggests “he peaked” that night in 1963, and that he has never been as funny since. (I’m pretty sure my own assertive wife has told me something similar on more than one occasion.)
Despite Alice’s high standards, Trillin heartwarmingly admits that he never stopped trying to impress her. He reveals that all of his books were written with her in mind, and that the only reason Tepper ever even was sent to a publisher was that she found it funny. He kids with her about her reckless driving, and suggests that the only reason she never got speeding tickets was her breathtaking beauty. (When Alice, at the age of 61, laments that she has finally gotten a speeding ticket because she is no longer beautiful, Trillin quips, “I hear they’re taking in a lot of gay cops these days…We’re all in favor of that, of course, but it’s bound to change the whole equation.”) Trillin writes about how Alice never missed a single school play starring her children, how she quit a well-paying job to teach English to convicts at Sing-Sing, how she could have been a model but instead chose to be a teacher and a writer. Through it all, the reader feels the extraordinary love the author has for his wife.
When Alice becomes ill with lung cancer – though she had never smoked a cigarette in her life – the book takes on the melancholy tone of two other great literary works: Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking and John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. (Indeed, at times Trillin’s words echo Irving’s final words in Owen Meany: “Oh God – please give him back! I shall keep asking you.”) But the portrait which Trillin paints of his Alice suggests that she would be distraught with the thought of him (or any reader) mourning her death; instead, he tells us, she would probably say “I’m so lucky” to have lived the years she did.
About Alice is a very quick read, and it is a more than worthwhile one. In one chapter, Trillin even reveals how Alice discovered “the secret of life,” but you’ll have to read the book to know what that is. And when you do read the book, you’ll see why one of the Trillin children called her mom “the coolest girl I ever knew.” And if your experience of reading the book is anything like mine, you’ll be moved. Trillin recounts how he received a letter from a young woman who “sometimes looked at her boyfriend and thought, ‘But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?’” Reading this book made me want to make sure that I show my own wife – despite our different personalities – the same type of pure love that Calvin showed Alice during their 35-year marriage.
May 25, 2008
About Alice is Calvin Trillin's beautiful, loving tribute to his late wife, Alice. After over forty years together he still speaks of her with that true-love light in his voice, as if she could have done no wrong~and those things she did do which differed from him, which perhaps annoyed him, which perhaps they argued about were just those darling little eccentricities that endeared her to him ever the more.
I don't recall reading any of Trillin's New Yorker pieces before though i'm sure i must have; i do know i haven't read any of his other books. I picked this one up after hearing him on the Diane Rehm Show, and aside from sounding somewhat familiar it sounded very appealing.
Many of my serious relationships have ended just as those lust/infatuation chemicals/hormones are beginning to die out and other feelings of true love, or friendship, or whatever are supposed to be kicking in (or so i've been told). I used to fear that friendship stage, now i can sympathize/commiserate with the girl who wrote to Trillin "that she sometimes looked at her boyfriend and thought 'But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?'"
Or maybe that's all just a bit too mushy/ooggy for me~i do love the sturm und drang just a touch.
Still and all, this is a lovely, quick read~i might just pick up a few more of his books.
I don't recall reading any of Trillin's New Yorker pieces before though i'm sure i must have; i do know i haven't read any of his other books. I picked this one up after hearing him on the Diane Rehm Show, and aside from sounding somewhat familiar it sounded very appealing.
Many of my serious relationships have ended just as those lust/infatuation chemicals/hormones are beginning to die out and other feelings of true love, or friendship, or whatever are supposed to be kicking in (or so i've been told). I used to fear that friendship stage, now i can sympathize/commiserate with the girl who wrote to Trillin "that she sometimes looked at her boyfriend and thought 'But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?'"
Or maybe that's all just a bit too mushy/ooggy for me~i do love the sturm und drang just a touch.
Still and all, this is a lovely, quick read~i might just pick up a few more of his books.
July 17, 2007
So Calvin Trillin has been writing stories for the New Yorker for years. I like him in the New Yorker-white guy-smart-funny-older & thus from a simpler era kind of way. He often wrote very lovingly and sweetly and funnily about his wife Alice.
This is a tiny book, around seventy pages or so, talking about Alice, her diagnosis of lung cancer in the seventies and her heart failure in the nineties from the radiation she had received to kill her cancer. It sounds like a downer I guess, and it is almost unbearably touching and sad in parts, but it is also funny and uplifting and smart.
He loved her so unabashedly, and said so in his writing, so that when she died, he recived many letters from women he didn't know who said things like "I hope I find someone who loves me as much as you loved Alice" and perhaps that is what is so bittersweet about this book and their lives together...because, of course, I want that too.
This is a tiny book, around seventy pages or so, talking about Alice, her diagnosis of lung cancer in the seventies and her heart failure in the nineties from the radiation she had received to kill her cancer. It sounds like a downer I guess, and it is almost unbearably touching and sad in parts, but it is also funny and uplifting and smart.
He loved her so unabashedly, and said so in his writing, so that when she died, he recived many letters from women he didn't know who said things like "I hope I find someone who loves me as much as you loved Alice" and perhaps that is what is so bittersweet about this book and their lives together...because, of course, I want that too.
April 2, 2014
Only 118 minutes in audio, I listened to this in one, traffic-y commute.
Trillin wrote this book about his wife, after she passed away. It's sad, and it is maybe more about him, even if he is talking about Alice. He seems to be trying to describe what he lost. It is very honest and well written and moving.
Trillin wrote this book about his wife, after she passed away. It's sad, and it is maybe more about him, even if he is talking about Alice. He seems to be trying to describe what he lost. It is very honest and well written and moving.
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