This Week in the Mercury
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Books Trillin With a T
Posted by Unpaid Arts Intern on Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:14 AM
Posted by Arts Intern Matthew Vollono
On Tuesday night I went to go see Calvin Trillin, noted humorist, writer, and self-appointed parallel parking expert at the Newmark Theater. Following a distinguished introduction—Trillin read at the inaugural Portland Arts and Lecture series in 1984—the author took the stage dressed in a corduroy sports jacket and flowery necktie. After comparing his rationale for writing silly verse about politicians to the act of building a life size model of the Palace at Versailles out of beers cans, he took on a vast range of topics, skewering everything from The Nation (it was like writing for “a pinko magazine printed on cheap paper”) to the supposedly humor-proof public persona of Barak Obama (“if worse comes to worse we can always make fun of the little girls”).
One of the pleasures of seeing Trillin read was watching an author who knows the precise way in which to present his material. There were no inarticulate mumbling or false starts or verbose explanations. He read with a single single droll, comic delivery, pausing only when the audiences laughter blocked out the sound of his voice. This informal approach lent the event a sense of intimacy, like sitting down to dinner with an incredibly lucid and hilariously crass old man. And that's always refreshing.
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