For anyone who’s read any books by Calvin Trillin — and if you haven’t, you’re just wasting time — there was another reason September 11 was a horrible day. On that day, his wife Alice (the one in the title of “Travels With Alice”) passed away. (There’s a piece in next week’s New Yorker, which for many years has been Calvin’s home base, and which published a piece of Alice’s own earlier this year.)
I never met Alice, but anyone who’s heard her voice in her husband’s columns would recognize her mix of fierce intelligence, kindness of spirit, and common sense.