Customer Reviews

Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff

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3 star:		(1)
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On a whim I picked up Calvin Trillin's book. I needed something funny, something light...something to enjoy in a totally different way than I am accustomed to. Turned out to be a wonderful choice, a whim well worth it.
Love this book. I enjoy Trillin's humor.
Being an avid fiction reader, I find myself mired in the most current titles which, most often, contain serious subject matter. Not complaining because I love stories and I am ever grateful to all of the wonderful authors who have provided me with a stream of never ending entertainment through out the years.
It is refreshing to take a break and realize that the written word can be employed in so many wonderful ways. Trillin's essay's and poems are priceless. His laugh out loud observations are fun.
Thank you Calvin Tillin for putting pen to paper and, even though I was reminded of my mom's unending supply of chicken a'la king, for helping to make this individual's life a little lighter.
Great collection .... highly recommended !

To say that Calvin Trillin is among America's best humorists of a generation is not a matter of debate, I would think. He's witty to a fault and the fault is not his. Low-key (to a fault) is his way and it's an endearing quality that has led to many a fine article of prose or a contribution of poetry over the years.

The title,"Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin", sets the bar just low enough that the expectations of the reader cannot be outdone. Here he has collected writings of over forty years. If you're a fan of his, which I am, this could be like being given Halloween candy days early. That said, I do have some preferences in his new book....his poetry. This is where he shines...succinct, very funny and always highly innovative. His chapter, "Twenty Years of Pols" is exceptional and just when you thought those old candidates like Steve Forbes, David Vitter or Alfonse D'Amato had entered the "who's who" of forgotten American politicians, Trillin reminds us that they once were in our midst, groping for the presidency, or groping for something else.

Taking in so much of Trillin at one reading (or two, if it's a sunny day) is not the best way to read him. The accumulative presentations aren't so good all jammed into one book. We get an idea that Kansas City, Alice, Yale and being a Jew are the four main sources of his humor. This could be, but they work better individually than a as mini-mini-tome.

I highly recommend, "Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin" but urge the reader to read it over a period of days or even weeks, and like a good bottle of red wine, let it breathe. You will find it much more satisfying that way.

If you are an old Trillin fan (as I am) you'll enjoy this.

If you are not, especially if you are not old enough to remember Tom Delay, Rodney King and George H.W. Bush you will do better with other books he's written. The material goes back 40 years (mostly in the later half of that period but still not recent).

I would rate the following Trillin books 5 stars:
- American Stories
- All About Alice
- Messages from my Father: A Memoir
? ? Is it true this was the inspiration for Obama's Dreams from my Father?
- Tummy Trilogy

Why doesn't Amazon let me indent this list?

Calvin Trillin is a wonderfully funny storyteller, whether or not his stories are true or fictional. He's a quintessential New Yorker, but his appeal is universal, if more than a little ethnic. I'd read previously many of the essays included in this new compilation, but re-reading them was just as funny the second time around. The essays, some of which are more than thirty years old, remain funny today; many that were written in the Reagan era could have been written last week. The included essays are short enough and filled with enough gems of humor that they simply cry out to be read aloud, and in this instance my husband was the happy recipient.

I was happy that this particular excerpt from his novel Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel was included, and here's why: It's a perfect little snapshot of his humor, and either you'll love it or you won't. To set it up a bit, a counterman at the famous Russ and Daughters deli is complaining to Tepper how annoyed he gets when certain customers ask for "nice" whitefish when of course all of the whitefish he serves up is "nice." The following is what he wishes he could tell those customers.

"I'm glad you said that, because I wasn't going to get you a nice whitefish. If you hadn't said that, I would have looked for a whitefish that's been sitting there since Tisha B'Av--an old, greasy, farshtunken whitefish...That's why the boss gets up at four in the morning to go to the suppliers, so he can get the farshtunken whitefish before his competitors. Otherwise, if he slept until a civilized hour, as maybe he deserves by now, he might get stuck with nice whitefish."

If you loved that fragment, you'll want to read the remainder of Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin, and perhaps Tepper Isn't Going Out as well. It's quite funny and quirky, about a New Yorker who spends much of his time sitting in his car quietly reading the paper while holding onto precious parking spots. Tepper is a fairly quick read while this new compilation is best read a little at a time, the better to savor his style of humor.

Thoroughly delightful. Calvin's collection is LOL entertaining and certain to lift your spirits. Now I know what happened to my mother's favorite, chicken a la king. Maybe the chicken croquettes are there as well.

I ordered Calvin Trillin's book because I saw him on "the Daily Show with Jon Stewart", and I am indebted to Jon for introducing me to someone I wish I had discovered long ago.
I think he is the funniest man alive. I laughed so hard and sometimes for so long that I would have to put the book down because my stomach muscles were giving out.
Granted, he may not be everyone's cup of tea. Depends largely on what kind of humor appeals to you, but for me he combines the perfect blend of political satire, and observations on the absurdities of everyday life that really tickles my funny bone.
(What bone is that exactly?)
If you are the kind that takes offense easily, and dislikes having your political party or your ideology poked fun at, you probably should give it a skip. He spares almost no one on the public scene, although he is much kinder to Democrats than to Republicans.
But it's not all political. And some of his columns are funnier than others. But how can you not love a man who gives advice on child rearing by saying, "Try to get one that doesn't spit up. Otherwise, you're on your own."

A fun book to read but best read over a period of time as there is a sameness to author's writing style which could dull the impact. Some pieces are very witty and are really timeless in their critique of the world we've created for ourselves.

This is, as you probably have figured out by now, a career retrospective of one of the best writers of the last half-century, focusing on his funny material. The title, of course, is a reference to the famous retrospective Just Enough Liebling, collecting the work of a quite different writer also strongly associated with The New Yorker.

QUITE ENOUGH mostly collects the best of Trillin's regular columns -- published slightly more often than monthly for a few decades starting in the mid-70s, for The Nation and Time and syndication -- which have previously been seen in his books Uncivil Liberties, With All Disrespect, If You can't Say Something Nice, Enough's Enough, and Too Soon To Tell. There's also some of his "deadline poetry" -- decent doggerel, though not as lasting or as funny as his prose work -- for The Nation over the past two decades (also collected, though I won't give you a sheaf of links this time). And then there's also a few snippets from his occasional novels, with the preponderance coming from Tepper Isn't Going Out (the greatest novel that ever will be written about parking in Manhattan).

As you might guess from the Nation connection, Trillin tends to the lefty side, but he doesn't get specifically political all that often -- and much of his best funny work is about his family. (So don't avoid this book unless you're *really* allergic to New York liberals.) Trillin is from the midwest originally -- Kansas City, Missouri -- and he's got the mid-country diffident shrug down better than anyone else; his humor comes from a populism rather than an elitism, a sense that we can all make things better if we just pull up our socks and do it. All of the pieces here are short, and organized into semi-coherent thematic groupings -- not too obviously, just enough to make them clump nicely and play off each other -- and it's a joy to read through.

Calvin Trillin is one of our national treasures: I insist on this, and will hear no argument otherwise. And this a splendid collection of some of his best and most characteristic writing, which I can't recommend more highly

I find that even on a second or third reading of a Calvin Trillin piece, I experience it as fresh and interesting. One of his latest collections, Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin, contained many essays I've read before, and I found re-reading them to be entertaining and enjoyable. His wit and writing style keeps a reader engaged, and he has a prodigious skill at observation and in selecting the perfect word and phrase. Readers who love fine and witty writing are those most likely to enjoy this book.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)

Since I am a fan of humor and stand-up comedy I am ashamed to admit I never heard of Calvin Trillin until I saw him interviewed by Jon Stewart on the
"Daily Show".
This has become a rare form of writing today,best described as dry wit or observations on just about anything put into a askew perspective.
"Quite Enough" is an excellent selection of articles from 40 years of writing on every subject you can think of. You can open the book to any
article and read it in a few minutes. I would suggest you take a few minutes to think about an article when you finish it.
An excellent book to add to a collection of written humor which has become a dying art.
Humor for the thinking man and woman.