Word: trillin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Calvin Trillin's 1977 comic novel Runestruck, the fictitious Maine coastal town of Berryville goes crazy when a stone with inscriptions that seem to be Nordic is unearthed there. Some townspeople want to cash in on the bonanza by doing such things as building a theme park and holding a festival. Others seek, in vain, to avoid exploitation. Chaos reigns as the citizens realize that Berryville is likely to become a national shrine: the site of the first Viking settlement in America. Last week real events in a small Maine community seemed on the verge of following those...
...Newfoundland, not by Norsemen but by seagoing Indians. After all, he noted, no other Norse materials have been discovered around Blue Hill. Still, the museum is taking no chances. To stave off a possible stampede of runic treasure hunters who might indeed turn Blue Hill into a facsimile of Trillin's Berryville, Maine officials want the area around the Indian mound placed under federal protection...
...those reputed to have laid a pencil to the project are Michael Arlen, Carl Bernstein, Nora Ephron, Frances Fitz-Gerald, Jerzy Kosinski, George and Freddy Plimpton, Terry Southern and about three or four dozen other wordsmiths from leading publishing firms, the unemployment rolls and the Times itself. Observed Calvin Trillin, one of the town's few big-time scribes who declined to participate: "Sounds as if they emptied the back room at Elaine's for this...
...Trillin approaches this kind of "effortless" writing about people in the section of Alice, Let's Eat where he discusses Fats Goldberg. In 12 pages he creates a marvelously warm and funny character portrayal of the New York City pizza baron. Fats, we learn, has a mania for inventing crazy and impracticable schemes, such as an early-morning catering service called Brunch a la Goldberg, and a "pizza pusher" device made of plastic that would allow someone to eat a piece of hot pizza without burning his fingers. Best whacky idea of all, perhaps, was for Fats (who used...
Alice, Let's Eat is not a book by a "grownup" food writer. Its author's spontaneity and childlike view of the world save it from being tedious in the manner of most food books. Instead, Trillin has written a witty and trenchant mishmash of culinary anecdotes and satire--one that will not grow stale upon a second or third helping...