Tales from the Tummy Trilogy

Trillin, Calvin

ISBN 10: 1565114051 ISBN 13: 9781565114050

Publisher: Highbridge Audio, 2001

Synopsis

Calvin Trillin is America's funniest food writer. He is passionate about good cooking—not haute cuisine but genuine good food. What he likes to write about is eating rather than food. Known to his fans as a "happy eater," he is also a highly-respected journalist and a nimble humorist. It is this unique combination of talents that makes The Tummy Trilogy such a wonderfully entertaining collection. Includes American Fried; Alice, Let's Eat; and Third Helpings.

In the 1970's, when Trillin was writing the "American Journal" feature for the New Yorker, he spent a great deal of time on the road, diligently questing after the best cooking in every city, town, and village he passed through. When approaching local people, his technique was simple, and simply brilliant: "Don't take me to the place you took your parents on their 25th wedding anniversary; take me to the place you went the night you came home after 14 months in Korea." With this kind of attitude, whether he is writing about taking his own multi-course picnic on a no-frills flight to Miami, describing the perils of post eating, indulging in the pleasures of pigging-out in Hong Kong, or giving us the definitive history of the origin of the Buffalo chicken wing, the results are marvelously funny and will be a very special treat for people who love eating and relish good prose.

About this title

Review:

Throughout the 1970s, as he wrote the "American Journal" feature for the New Yorker, Calvin Trillin crossed and recrossed the continent. Braver than most transients, he dined in every manner of restaurant, sampling all kinds of native cuisine. He tirelessly sniffed out plain but great joints where the local people loved to eat. "[Don't take me to the] place you took your parents on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, [but] the place you went the night you came home after fourteen months in Korea." As a result of such hard-nosed pursuit of good food, this "Walt Whitman of American eats" produced three delightful books chronicling his gastronomic journey, and they have now been collected into The Tummy Trilogy. Trillin is a marvelous writer, affable and witty under any circumstances. He's also an extremely enthusiastic eater, so the books are filled with gourmet brio. Here's a sample from the first book, American Fried:

ME: Anybody who served a milkshake like this in Kansas City would be put in jail.

ALICE: You promised not to indulge in any of that hometown nostalgia while I'm eating. You know it gives me indigestion.

ME: What nostalgia? Facts are facts. The kind of milkshake that I personally consumed six hundred gallons of at the Country Club Daily is an historical fact in three flavors. Your indigestion is not from listening to my fair-minded remarks on the food of a particular American city. It's from drinking that gray skim milk this bandit is trying to pass off as a milkshake.

This book is almost as fun as tucking into a big, delicious meal (but no substitute, of course). Trillin's family, long-suffering in the face of a father's obsessions, is as winning as always. If you're a dedicated fan--or just dipping into the writing of this good-natured maestro--The Tummy Trilogy is a wonderful book. --Michael Gerber

From the Back Cover:

In the 1970s, Calvin Trillin informed us that the most glorious food in an American city was not to be found at the pretentious rooftop restaurant he called La Maison de la Casa House, Continental Cuisine. With three hilarious books, he established himself as "our funniest food writer" and, in Craig Claiborne's phrase, "the Walt Whitman of American eats". Now the three books have been combined in what Trillin calls The Tummy Trilogy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Highbridge Audio
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1565114051
• ISBN 13: 9781565114050
• Binding: Audio Cassette