Travels with Alice
- Book Review,
by Calvin Trillin
Amazon.com
Calvin Trillin goes through life one step behind his appetite. He says he's just a Big Hungry Boy from the Midwest, but he's also one of the funniest American writers around, writing a palate pilgrimage through Europe and the Caribbean, where Trillin fantasizes of an Italian West Indies island of Santo Prosciutto "whose steep hills are green with garlic plants." Trillin gives free play to other obsessions (like taureaux piscine), but most of the travels are happily fueled by thoughts of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
From Publishers Weekly
Syndicated humor columnist, author ( If You Can't Say Something Nice ) and New Yorker writer Trillin publicly refers to his wife Alice as the principessa when they travel: "I found it improved the service in hotels." With Alice and daughters Abigail and Sarah, he here roams through France, Italy, Spain and the Caribbean, his selective eye and broad interests picking up on whatever intrigues him. In southern France, for instance, he pursues the vanishing arcade game of babyfoot and develops an obsession with the provincial event called taureaux piscine , a form of bullfighting requiring a small plastic swimming pool. In a mildly curmudgeonly tone, Trillin reveals a skeptic's attitude toward the French language and manners, though he's willing to forgive much of a country that gave the world the French fry. Food is never far from his thoughts, whether it leads him to farmers' markets in Provence, to sampling ethnic specialties on a stroll through lower Manhattan, or taste-testing the latest fast-food offerings in Paris. If he were a stand-up comedian, these essays would be called routines; whatever one calls them, they're sure to raise a smile. The peripatetic, insatiably curious Trillin is invariably entertaining. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Readers who know Trillin's work are justified in expecting from him something quite different from the ordinary travel book, and they will find it here. In this gathering of 15 recollections of holidays, many of which were written originally for periodicals such as The New Yorker , Trillin offers himself as essayist rather than descriptive writer, interpreter rather than guide. With him most of the time were his wife Alice and two daughters, and their experiences--renting a house in the south of France, shopping at the Central Market in Florence, and hanging around the small French town of Uzes--provide the themes of a readable, unexacting book of pleasant rambles and a multiplicity of small happenings and human stories. Those who like bright, inconsequential chatter, with many diverse scraps of information thrown in, will enjoy this book. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/89.- A.J. Anderson, Graduate Sch. of Library & Information Science, Simmons Coll., BostonCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review
"One of the classiest and funniest writers . . . Tantalizing and hilarious."
Lloyd Rose, The Village Voice
"A book full of delights! His work is a moveable feast."
Molly Haskell, The New York Times Book Review
"Tantalizing and Hilarious."
Review
"Utterly delightful . . . the sophisticated traveler masquerading as innocent abroad."--Newsday
"One of the classiest and funniest writers . . . Tantalizing and hilarious."--The New York Times Book Review
"A book full of delights! His work is a moveable feast."--Lloyd Rose, The Village Voice
"Trillin's skillful book of travel, food and humor is an entertaining excursion."--The Christian Science Monitor
Dan Cryer, Newsday
"Utterly delightful the sophisticated traveler masquerading as innocent abroad."
Lloyd Rose, The Village Voice
"A book full of delights [Trillin's] work is a moveable feast."
The Christian Science Monitor
"Trillin's skillful blend of travel, food and humor is an entertaining excursion."
Review
"Utterly delightful . . . the sophisticated traveler masquerading as innocent abroad."--Newsday
"One of the classiest and funniest writers . . . Tantalizing and hilarious."--The New York Times Book Review
"A book full of delights! His work is a moveable feast."--Lloyd Rose, The Village Voice
"Trillin's skillful book of travel, food and humor is an entertaining excursion."--The Christian Science Monitor
Book Description
This delightful book collects Calvin Trillin's accounts of his trips to Europe with his wife, Alice, and their two daughters. In Taormina, Sicily, they cheerfully disagree with Mrs. Tweedie's 1904 assertion that the beautiful town "is being spoilt," and skip the Grand Tour in favor of swimming holes, table soccer, and taureaux piscine. In Paris, they spend a day on the Champs- Elysées comparing Freetime's "le Hitburger" to McDonald's Big Mac. In Spain, Trillin wonders whether he will run out of Spanish "the way someone might run out of flour or eggs." Filled with Trillin's characteristic humor, Travels with Alice is the perfect book for summer travelers.
From the Back Cover
Here Calvin Trillin defends Sicilian drivers from the charge of unpredictability ("they can be counted on to pass") and elucidates the mysteris of taureaux piscine ("if you and the bull are in the pool at the same time, you win") and wonders at mealtime in the Caribbean why there are no Italian West Indies--Santo Prosciutto, I.W.I. His traveling companions are his two daughters and his wife, Alice, referred to in Italy as "the principesa," he says, because "I found it improved the service at the hotels."
About the Author
Calvin Trillin is the author of twenty books, including Family Man (FSG, 1998) and Messages from My Father (FSG, 1996). He writes a weekly column for Time and a weekly poem for The Nation. He lives in New York City.
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