Review by Booklist Review
Is there anything Trillin can't write about? Here, in his latest collection of hilarious, short, and spicy essays, he has his say on such far-flung topics as geckos, Russia, Louisiana hot sauce, the cold war, Iowa, monkfish, why Saudi women aren't allowed to drive, rock music, presidents, embezzlers, slide rules, car phones, slang, peanuts, and family life. Trillin's columns are like magic tricks; he distracts us with one hand, while pulling a bouquet of flowers from behind our ear with the other. But it's more than showmanship: Trillin's pithy, always witty observations are sharp, bright, and resonant. We find ourselves not only laughing out loud but nodding in wry recognition. And there's no end to the sort of absurdities that intrigue Trillin, both benign and frightful. In fact, in one essay, he frets that real life has become so ludicrous that it's rendering exaggeration, an essayist's key tool, obsolete. (Reviewed Apr. 15, 1995)0374278466Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this collection of some 90 syndicated columns written in the past four years, the reliably amusing Trillin mixes whimsical fluff with sly stilettos. In the whimsy department are essays on monkfish and high tides, courtesy of his Nova Scotia summers, as well as the ``grandchildren gap'' faced by parents of professionals and the prospect of the Queen being audited. Most of those essays go down easy enough, but Trillin also takes on bigger targets. The lip-synch shame of the Milli Vanilli duo, who were exposed as not having done the singing on their albums, prompts him to muse on the lack of scandal accorded celebrity authors whose books are ghostwritten. News that an East German spy waited tables at the West German Senate suggests spymasters confounded by Ronald Reagan's airy anecdotes, which they'd taped expecting to learn secret information. And, noting that some companies give campaign contributions to both political parties, he proposes a new question for a national high school civics exam: ``Explain this practice without using the word `bribery.'" This collection shows Trillin's ephemera to be delightfully durable. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The prolific New Yorker journalist and gourmand collects the best from the last four years of his syndicated column--a healthy dose of common sense and amiable cynicism. A Kansas City native, Trillin (Deadline Poet, 1994, etc.) smartly balances midwestern aw-shucks shtick with his cracker- barrel wise-guy persona. After warning readers not to take him too seriously, Trillin saves his harshest words for overpaid CEOs, real estate sharks, Eurotrash, the book publishing biz, the NRA, and Ronald Reagan, whose memoirs mark a triumph of history as spin control. A congenial curmudgeon, Trillin enjoys being too old to appreciate aspects of youth culture. His loyalty to the defunct minor league team from his hometown (the Kansas City Blues) is just one of his quirky pleasures, along with ``Gunga Din'' and imitating a dog's bark. Trillin delights in America at its wackiest, from the tic-tac-toe-playing chicken in NYC's Chinatown to medieval jousting restaurants in central Florida. He's always good for lots of domestic laughs as well, especially the mixed joys of living in a female-dominated household presided over by the ever-sensible Alice. He even has a soft spot for hapless George Bush, a man out of step with the times. No slouch when it comes to the failures of Bill Clinton, Trillin continues to be ``blindsided by the truth'' (i.e., reality is stranger than invention). In a crunch, the peripatetic columnist relies on weird news items from around the world, such as China's claim to have invented golf, or the story of a young man in Thailand who refused to leave his room for 22 years because his parents wouldn't buy him a motorcycle. Like any journalist worth his salt, Trillin thrills to the vagaries of language itself, especially slang and euphemism. The perfect antidote to the smirky, mean-spirited humor so popular these days. (author tour)
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