Customer Reviews

About Alice

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I wish I had known her. Some five years after her death, The New Yorker magazine writer par excellence Calvin Trillin has penned a loving, touching portrait of his late wife, Alice Stewart Trillin, whom he married in 1965. Mr. Trillin has claimed that his work is not as good since she died as she used to edit his drafts. That's a bit hard to believe as while I've not read all of his articles and books, I have eagerly consumed several and found "About Alice" to be as impeccably crafted as his earlier works. He's a writer blessed with a goodly share of humor, keen observation, and the ability to make even the most everyday things, such as the quest for a parking space, intriguing.

Those who have read Mr. Trillin are familiar with Alice as she has appeared in many of his writings. We believed we knew her. Not really. As Mr. Trillin once noted in looking over the letters of condolence he received. So many felt that they knew her; a fact he believes she'd deny. She felt he portrayed her as a sort of a dietician in sensible shoes.

In fact, he noted this description of her in a speech he once made and was asked whether or not she was in the audience and if so, would she stand? Stand she did without saying a word, simply waving a very expensive high heeled shoe in the air.

She was, as he describes her, a mother who thought that if you didn't go to every performance of your child's school play, "the county will come and take the child." She was warm, extremely intelligent, and generous, sometimes overlooking the inflation in a repairman's bill with, "He doesn't have a very nice life. And we're so lucky."

They were opposites; for him, it was love at first sight and obviously still is. "About Alice" is, of course, about a remarkable woman but it is also the story of a marriage. As read by the one person who should do so, Mr. Trillin, it's a book that should be heard by everyone who is in love, all who were in love, and those who want to be.

- Gail Cooke

Calvin Trillin's heartfelt, touching, and occasionally humorous tribute is an expanded essay about his affection for and appreciation of his late wife, Alice. She was a stunning blonde who turned heads whenever she entered a room, but she never coasted on her good looks. Alice's integrity, character, marvelous sense of humor, unflagging energy, optimism, and down-to-earth personality made her stand out; she had a unique talent for reaching out to others and making her family, friends, and students feel valued and appreciated. Alice was a skilled listener who dispensed detailed advice, consolation, and genuine sympathy when appropriate; she had a gift for relating to people intimately without being sloppily sentimental. She lent a helping hand to "anyone she loved, or liked, or knew, or didn't quite know but knew someone who did, or didn't know from a hole in the wall," said Nora Ephron. Alice wrote letters--what a lost art letter-writing is!--and her letters were works of art.

Trillin married Alice in 1965 and they enjoyed over thirty-five years together until her death on September 11, 2001. At their first meeting in 1963, Calvin was impressed by Alice's radiance. He never stopped trying to impress his wife and she never failed to impress him. Throughout her career, marriage, and even during her courageous battle with lung cancer and later, heart disease, Alice demonstrated that she was not just a pretty face. She was a enormously gifted, intelligent, and creative woman who was gave of herself unstintingly. She taught college kids, drug addicts in rehab, and prisoners in Sing Sing. "She always took it for granted that people who wanted to learn could be taught no matter what their background," and she routinely inspired her students to reach higher than they ever thought they could. She was also a talented writer, editor, and producer for educational television. Above all, Alice was a devoted wife and mother. Her love of family was shatterproof; she was a fiercely protective and involved parent who made sure that her husband and her two daughters, Abigail and Sarah, knew how much she cared for them. Alice may be gone now, but her beautiful legacy lives on.

Putting down Calvin Trillin's 'About Alice' one word came to mind: 'Beautiful'. Writing with deep affection that readers will easily connect to, the author demonstrates through action and his writing the unlimitedness of love and the human spirit. I truly enjoyed this book, written by a provocative author whose writing has influenced many of us.

Read this book and be a voyeur of a marriage that sparkled with wit and love. One of the most beautiful tributes to a wife that has ever been written, told in a style that is smart, funny and provacative. Who better to write this story than the incomparable Calvin Trillan who has a plain spoken and ironic style.

"About Alice" is Calvin Trillin's love song to Alice, his wife who died far too soon in 2001. Reading Trillin's evocative prose tonight brought laughter and tears. How I wished I had known Alice...

The New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin has often written about his wife, Alice. While I haven't read any of his previous works, I think he must have outdone himself in About Alice. About Alice is moving, it is elegant, but unfortunately, at 96 pages, it is also very short.

About Alice is part memoir, part tribute and all love story. Trillin met his future wife at a party and instantly fell in love. Friends claimed that they were George Burns and Gracie Allen, with Alice playing George. These two opposites proved to be the perfect compliment. Not only was Alice a talented writer as well, but also a dedicated teacher. Their happiness was threatened in 1976 when Alice was diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of 38 and given only two years to live. Amazingly, she survived another 25 years before succumbing to heart disease--her heart being damaged by the radiation treatment that saved her life years before.

It is obvious how much of a hole Alice's death has left in Trillin's life. Not only was she his wife, but he also depended on her to proofread, edit, and critique his many works. In the dedication of the first book published after her death, Trillin writes "I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice." Many women would be envious to have a husband who could write so eloquently about his love for his wife.

After reading About Alice, I'm impressed enough with both Trillin's writing and Alice that I plan to read some of his other works including Travels with Alice, and Alice, Let's Eat.

Calvin Trillin is one of our great humorists, raconteurs, literary stylists, and bon vivants. This book isn't funny. It's not witty nor gourmandizing. It's pithy and delicate and understated.

Trillin loved his wife. You will too.

This brief, beautiful book is a tribute to Alice Trillin, the author's wife, who died in New York City after a long battle with cancer on September 11, 2001. In this moving series of essays about Alice's character and person, Calvin Trillin never notes the coincidence of her death with the destruction of the World Trade Center, perhaps understandably reluctant to compare the two events. In fact, he avoids anything mawkish or overly sentimental and makes no overt plays for the reader's sympathy, preferring to let his fond illumination of Alice's life speak for itself.

Trillin has been a prolific writer for a lifetime, and many of his readers already felt a kinship with the woman he admits he sometimes portrayed as a "dietician in sensible shoes." Nobody has skewered family life and travails (traveling, eating, parenting) with as much gentle wit as he has, and given what he calls his "sitcom view" of their life, it's only natural that readers may have a skewed concept of the woman he married in the late 1960s and raised two daughters with. So many of his light, funny articles have featured her as straight man --- a kind of George Burns to his Gracie Allen.

In this book, Trillin fleshes out this adored woman, presenting Alice Stewart Trillin as a teacher, writer, activist and lecturer in her own right. She was straightforward in her views and not afraid to voice her opinion, regardless of the company. "If we'd had the misfortune to live in a milieu that called on me to work my way up in a corporation and on Alice to be the supportive and diplomatic and perfectly behaved corporate wife, I sometimes told her, I would never have emerged from middle management."

Alice was also beautiful, and while she shunned as extravagant some luxuries like fancy cars, she loved nice clothes and travel. She adored her children and was fanatical about attending every school event. A brush with death from lung cancer in 1976 shaped her life thereafter, increasing her devotion to helping others with cancer and sharpening her priorities.

Trillin's memories of Alice are at once inspiring, heartwarming, clever and sad. The book, much of which already has appeared in The New Yorker, is organized into short chapters about her beauty, passion for the English language, parental devotion, forthrightness and fortitude. Where appropriate, Trillin includes some of their dear friends' poignant remembrances to illustrate his points, but he also peppers the text with notes from readers who knew her only through his writing. "Yet I got a lot of letters like the one from a young woman in New York who wrote that she sometimes looked at her boyfriend and thought, 'But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?'"

In Trillin's prose, love has always sparkled just around the corner from wit --- and it hasn't stopped sparkling. From the evidence of this book, it's abundantly clear that the young woman's anxiety is well founded. Few are lucky enough to love (or be loved) as long and as well as Calvin Trillin loved his Alice.

--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol

As the author points out in the beginning of the book, many people felt they knew Alice that had never met her just from her portrayal in Trillin's books and essays. She was much more than just that sensible mom in the essays, as this brief but eloquent memoir illustrates. She was a great friend, a dedicated educator, a person who loved life and its riches, and most unknown to those who only knew her in print, was a great beauty. The picture on the back of the dust jacket of Alice and Calvin Trillin on their wedding day does as much to transform any pre-existing mental images of Alice as anything written in the book. She was an outstanding person and the world is a poorer place without her.

Calvin Trillin is one of those rare authors who is equally at home in comedy and serious writing. Having been profoundly moved by his book "Remembering Denny" many years ago I had a feeling "About Alice" would be well worth the read. I was not disappointed.

Alice's life (a joyous one it seems, interrupted by severe medical illnesses) is treated by her husband with terrific warmth. Yes, he might have put her on a small pedestal, but after all she was beautiful and she attended her children's school plays. Commenting on a recently published novel years ago, the most touching sentiment expressed by the author in the book was this one, I think..."I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice".

The author is adept at opening the curtain just a little on her. Would I have wanted to meet Alice? I think so, but she is probably best left to those she knew (and the ones who really knew her). "About Alice" seems just about right.