Customer Reviews

FLOATER

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This novel is a comedic delight. "Floater" is the writing job at a fictional news magazine held by the book's central character Fred Becker. (It's also a job Trillin once held in his pre-New Yorker days.) A "floater" does not have a permanent assignment, but moves from one section of the magazine to another as illness or other reason creates a temporary need. The story takes place over one week in the life of the magazine, and finds Becker wrestling with an intriguing news tip, that, if true, could lead to a significant change in his life.

Trillin's gift for illuminating the absurdities of life really shine here. The plot, while entertaining, takes a back seat to the stable of realistic characters that just about anyone who has spent time in an office will recognize--the glad-handler, the martyr, the hypochondriac, the guy you want to avoid going to lunch with, the champion of political correctness, and others.

It's a puzzle to me that this hilarious book has been allowed to go out of print. Though I've been a fan of Trillin for some time, I have to given thanks to Sara Nelson and her recent book, "So Many Books, So Little Time," for calling my attention to this forgotten gem.--William C. Hall

This book from 1980 is startlingly fresh. If we adjust the dollar amounts for book contracts to today's values, and concede that one character might have started the SUV craze, it is absolutely contemporary.

The book's insistence on Manhattan Island as the center of the universe would be annoying to non-New Yorkers. This is unfortunate, since the characters are mostly from outside Manhattan (as is the author) and their interaction doesn't depend at all on their location.

If the reader is able to deal with the Manhattan smugness, he will be amply rewarded with a plot and a cast of characters as perfectly drawn as any by Eric Ambler, in addition to a sly sense of humor which builds imperceptibly to a perfectly hilarious conclusion.

Trillin almost could have dispensed altogether with his lovely plot, as his characters could carry most novels all by themselves.

In addition to being a just-about-perfect exposition of the writer's craft, this book is also laugh-out-loud funny, literally.

Not laugh out loud, elbow in the ribs funny, but very amusing. Hollywood could have a hit making this into a movie. The overarching question of the book, "Is the First Lady pregnant?" is, as Hitchcock would put it, a McGuffin.

Read this book and any reference to x-rated topiary, 3/4rds stockings, and left-handed dentists will have you grinning.

Floater tells the insubstantial story of Fred Becker, a writer at a New York magazine who floats from desk to desk, filling in where needed, becoming an instant expert in medicine one second and women's styles the next. Anyone who's spent time as a reporter knows this experience well. Becker happens to run into a colleague with a reputation for passing on scurrilous gossip and receives what would be a sensational scoop (if true). The book starts well, yet it too quickly meanders into side roads and dead ends where Trillin wants to show us various supposedly quirky characters who work for the magazine. It's quite possible he based these on real life figures, which doesn't really help the reader a few decades later. One of his bosses picks up on the gossip and tries to use it to his advantage, but it all blows up and he looks set to be fired. Then it emerges that this had all been part of a plot to get rid of him. Or at least that's what I think it was about, since at this point I was fed up with the book. One to skip.

Calvin Trillin has an eye for the small details that make a book more than just assembled words that tell a story. If it isn't thigh slapping funny, you'll never be less than on the edge of laughter. His characters, and his approach to them are droll, eccentric and quite different from the cardboard characters that populate most novels. One might find this as a repressed memoir but perhaps not. Just because Mr. Trillin worked at both Time and The New Yorker is no reason to infer this casual look at the backstage of a weekly news magazine. It's his characters and the oddball plot that keep you reading. Or, in my case, slowed my reading as I really didn't want it to end. Thirty years after publication it's just as fresh and relevant as it was then. The same goofiness of story and people and the same pursuit of love, romance and a story. But it's about one man and how he sees things. We are lucky indeed to have Mr. Trillin to interpret what they are seeing, doing and thinking.

A good story, very dry wit, and I really liked the ending. It is a shame this book is out of print.