Product Description

Calvin Trillin, the celebrated New Yorker writer, offers a rich and engaging biography of his father, as well as a literate and entertaining fanfare for the common (and decent, and hard-working) man.

Abe Trillin had the western Missouri accent of someone who had grown up in St. Joseph and the dreams of America of someone who had been born is Russia. In Kansas City, he was a grocer, at least until he swore off the grocery business. He was given to swearing off things—coffee, tobacco, alcohol, all neckties that were not yellow in color. Presumably he had also sworn off swearing, although he was a collector of curses, such as "May you have an injury that is not covered by workman's compensation." Although he had a strong vision of the sort of person he wanted his son to be, his explicit advice about how to behave didn't go beyond an almost lackadaisical "You might as well be a mensch." Somehow, though, Abe Trillin's messages got through clearly.

The author's unerring sense of the American character is everywhere apparent in this quietly powerful memoir.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #91028 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Amazon.com Review
"The man was stubborn," writes Calvin Trillin -- the second most stubborn member of the Trillin family -- to begin this memoir of his father. Although he had a strong vision of the sort of person he wanted his son to be, Abe Trillin's explicit advice about how to behave didn't go beyond "You might as well be a mensch." Somehow, though, his messages got through clearly, and Calvin's work is a credit to his father's vision.

From Publishers Weekly
In his recent books Remembering Denny and Deadline Poet, Trillin included affectionate memories of his deceased father, a taciturn, stubbornly honest Kansas City grocer who wrote doggerel and planned for his son to go to Yale. This slim, charming memoir?a good chunk already appeared in the New Yorker?adds to that portrait. Abe Trillin, his son recalls, "did not make a strong first impression" on the world at large, but he quietly and wryly communicated bedrock values of modesty and responsibility. Abe eschewed luxury?"[m]y father had a strong sense of enoughness." He liked to collect Yiddish curses and yellow neckties. And while young Calvin thought his Midwestern youth was as American as possible, he now recognizes the effort of his father, who came to the U.S. from Ukraine at two. The author reflects that he's followed most of his father's messages, "with just a little light editing." And, he concludes poignantly, though some might look at Abe Trillin's life and deem him unfulfilled, "I'd like to believe that he thought more in terms of... a sense of continuity." Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Lest one be misled by the title into thinking that this book has something to do with the supernatural, be assured that it is no ectoplasmic romp. Having mentioned his father in Remembering Denny (LJ 3/15/93), syndicated columnist Trillin here devotes an entire book to telling the story of the "second generation grocer" who lived in St. Joseph, Missouri. Enormous skill is required to interest a reader in a person who at first sight would seem scarcely to justify full-length treatment, and loyal followers of Trillin won't be surprised to learn that he keeps his readers absorbed. With sentiment that is never mawkish, he spotlights the charms and idiosyncrasies of the man he describes as "stubborn." The book is not so much a biography as a portrait, a kind of evocative search for memories and events that have been significant in the life of Trillin fils. Recommended for most collections.
--A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

America's best columnist one-ups the memoir business
Calvin Trillin is like a tall glass of iced tea after a hot day. His reporting style, perfected across the years in the pages of TIME and the NEW YORKER, is unlike any other in the field. A native Kansas City boy, he gives creedence to the idea of Mid-Western taciturnity, eschewing flowery prose or even artful structure to simply tell what he has to tell. In the case of his weekly column for TIME, that brevity of word only makes what he has to say even funnier. For proof, check out his collections (the recent "Too Soon To Tell") to remember that intelligence, humility and wit usually went hand in hand in the old days of reportage. Cross Edward R. Murrow with Garrison Keillor, and you've found Trillin. But even he has developed a beauty of style all his own. Now he turns his attention to that most painful and mushy of topics, the parent, in his superb new memoir "Messages From My Father," an observation from a grown son to his deceased patriarch. The memoir business has been burgeoning lately, with moving evocations of the past produced from such disparate writers as white- knuckled reporter Pete Hamill (A Drinking Life) to poet Mary Karr (The Liar's Club) but Trillin never calls attention to a plight or condition, never once opens up his family secrets for triage but instead pulls off the hat trick of talking about his father and his family while growing up in post-war America without a trace of false notes or cheap sentiment. Abe Trillin emerges from the book as a decent believer in the American Dream and its unbiased blessing on all the children of immigrants. Son Calvin looks at him honestly, his quirks (always wearing yellow ties, "swearing off" coffee without ever drinking it to begin with) his stubbornness and his enduring hope for his young boy; all topics of great drama, but rendered with good humor and genuine, clear-eyed honesty. Fathers and Sons have rarely been prodded in such a way to expose true feeling, instead of simple sentiment. Trillin, as always, reminds his readers to cut through the myths that cloud our judgments of our blood and ourselves and laugh. Maybe then, he hopes, we'll understand the myth of fatherhood a little more.

Affectionate and funny
Humorist, journalist, food maven, the author of numerous books and a writer for The New Yorker, Trillin brings his blend of self-deprecating humor and thoughtful observation to this affectionate memoir of his father.

Abram Trilinsky emigrated to St. Joseph, Missouri, from Russia at the age of two. When his wife hinted at a trip to Europe, his terse response was, "I've been." He was resolutely a mid-western American, a man who changed his name to Abe Trillin, and at the end of his life exhibitted the only prejudice his son ever observed - an impatience with "refugees," by which he meant people who clung to the language and customs of their country of origin.

He was a stubborn man, like most of his family, described by his wife as "Mules!" "I sometimes imagined my father as swearing off things just to keep in practice," his son observes.

He never swore although he collected colorful curses - "May you have an injury that's not covered by workman's compensation." His honesty was absolute - when a child turned 12 he paid full price at the movies even if he looked 9.

He was unassuming. When Calvin was in high school, his father opened a restaurant and took to wearing yellow ties. "He said something about how most people don't stand out from the crowd, and how it helped to have a sort of signature." This seemed embarrasing to his adolescent son. "What was so great about having someone say, 'Oh, yes, Abe Trillin - the guy with the yellow ties'?" But years later at Abe's funeral, he's touched by how many friends asked for a yellow tie as a remembrance.

His father was not a talker. One of his favorite jokes concerned a Jewish actor who finally gets a real part playing a Jewish father. The actor asks his father why he seems disappointed. " 'Of course I'm proud of you son,' " the father says, " 'But we were hoping you'd get a speaking part.' "

Calvin writes, "What strikes me as odd now is how much my father managed to get across without those heart-to-hearts that I've read about fathers and sons having." Without it being talked about, Calvin knew his father was ambitious for him. "It was a given in our family that my father was a grocer so that I wouldn't have to be."

One of their biggest arguments concerned Calvin's joining the Boy Scouts. He hated Boy Scouts but Abe regarded it as essential to American boyhood, a necessary step on the way to Yale, Trillin senior's university of choice, an idea he'd gotten from a novel read as a boy - Stover At Yale.

Calvin went to Yale. Yale launched him out of Kansas City, never to return (also as Abe expected). The grocer's son would never be a grocer.

In one (somewhat unrealistically) ingenuous chapter Trillin goes to a dinner of prominent writers and realizes that they all went to Ivy League schools as he did. Was there a connection? (Puleeeeze). "For the first time, I realized that my father's vision of how all of this was supposed to work out might not have been as simplistic as I had always assumed."

This slim volume is deeply captivating and affecting. His father emerges as a man of indomitable will, will so strong he imposed it simply by being. He was a man who could afford to be easy going and funny, all the while adhering to a plan of grand ambition which embraced cross country automobile trips to broaden the horizons of his children and simple pronouncements: "You might as well be a mensch." Much of the book's power lies in the author's recognition of himself as his father's ambition fulfilled - a successful American who does his best to "be a mensch," a real human being.

A nolstagic look back into father/son 50's & 60's
A fine book for any man to read who is a: beyond forty five years old, b: has sons, c: possibly was brought up Jewish. All or some of the above would enjoy this book. I am reminded of my own father, his triumphs and shortcomings and Calvin's book is a must for any person who wants a quick fun read with interesting messages. I started it, and finished it the same morning! I could not put it down...