Word: trillins
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...grown-up food writer," insists Calvin Trillin. Though author of two books on eating--American Fried and his latest, Alice, Let's Eat--Trillin disavows any professional knowledge of food or of food-writing. Indeed, he dismisses culinary coups de plume as "boring and not my field. I can't write a straight story about food...
Matter of survival, says Trillin. Since 1967 he has traveled the country writing a series of articles for the New Yorker called "U.S. Journal"--working as a sort of pulp Charles Kuralt. His food books recount the struggles of a travelling person to get something decent...
...write serious stuff, but not about food," Trillin says, smiling, while in Cambridge recently to publicize his sixth book. With mild eyes the color of swimming pools and a moderate waistline, in person he hardly seems the insatiate food ogre of his books. "I take on a persona as a glutton in my food books," he explains shyly...
...persona as glutton serves as the vehicle for much of the humor in Alice, Let's Eat. In this rambling, anecdotal frolic, Trillin regales us with stories of domestic spats that have arisen in his family due to his gastronomical ardor. When traveling, he constantly gets into arguments with his wife, Alice, about whether to see the sights or eat. Trillin can't understand Alice's "strange fixation on having only three meals...
...Trillin has little in common with what his wife calls "grownup food writers" like Craig Claiborne. His spécialité might be termed basse cuisine. During the course of the book, he partakes of not one but two meals prepared by the legendary French chef Paul Bocuse and musters, at best, a joyless respect. The most positive thing he can say shows where his heart and stomach truly lie: "The truffle soup I ate as a first course could be honorably compared with the andouille gumbo turned out by the Jaycees of Laplace, Louisiana...