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Essays and Individual Humorists, U.S. Authors - 20th Century - Literary Biography
Too Soon to Tell by Calvin Trillin β€” book cover

Too Soon to Tell

by Calvin Trillin
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Overview

Too Soon To Tell reveals Trillin at his barbed and irrepressible best. His short takes send us back to contemporary life refreshed and delighted.

Trillin has come to be known as a writer with something witty to say about any topic that crosses his desk. This collection of his topical essays reveals Trillen at his barbed and irrepressible best.

Synopsis

The topical essays of Too Soon to Tell reveal Calvin Trillin at his barbed and irrepressible best. Dealing with matters of the family, he tells the tale of a couple who were at first pleased that their twenty-six-year-old son had finally moved out ("If Jeffrey's going to find himself, it would probably help for him to look somewhere other than his own room") and then realized that they had lost the ability to videotape. Grappling with educational issues, he discusses whether the presence of Michael Milken as a lecturer at the UCLA business school means that its religion department will get around to employing Jim Bakker ("Church Management 101: Imaginative Ideas in Religious Fund-Raising"). In the field of world affairs, he deals with the role of astrologers ("The planets are perfect for trading arms for hostages and saying you didn't") and whether the language laws in Quebec really require the hiring of a mime who doesn't speak French rather than a mime who doesn't speak English. Trillin's short takes send us back to life refreshed and delighted.

Publishers Weekly

This collection of amiable satire draws from both Trillin's syndicated column and his writings for the New Yorker. (Aug.)

About the Author, Calvin Trillin

A humorist in the tradition of Mark Twain and Robert Benchley, Calvin Trillin has been offering up his sly observations to magazine readers for decades, as a political "doggerelist" (The Deadline Poet) and columnist (Uncivil Liberties). He has also uncapped his pen to discuss the joys of family life and the pleasures of chasing down the perfect meal. Anna Quindlen, writing in her New York Times column in 1991, called him a man who disembowels pomp with such a good-natured sword.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This collection of amiable satire draws from both Trillin's syndicated column and his writings for the New Yorker. (Aug.)

Library Journal

Every few years, Trillin gathers a bunch of his syndicated columns on anything and everything and converts them into a book. This is his fifth such collection. It is difficult to find anything new or particularly illuminating to say about Trillin. In this book, readers will discover precisely what they would expect from past acquaintance: wit, spiced with a tang of tolerant cynicism; a chuckly sort of humor rather than a guffawing one; a purged prose in which the inessential is resolutely excluded; and little in the way of subject matter to which he will not give at least a flying salute. A sturdy package job that makes for good reading. Recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/95.]-A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston

Book Details

Published
August 1, 2004
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages
308
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780374529864

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