Calvin Trillin has reported serious pieces across America for The New Yorker, covered the civil rights movement in the South for Time, and written comic verse for The Nation. But one of his favorite subjects over the years—a superb fit for his unique combination of reportage and humor—has been his own professional environment: the American press. In The Lede, Trillin gathers his writing on reporting, reporters, and their world.
Both humorous and serious ... Trillin is a diligent reporter and a subtle writer, and his prose reads as though it were both effortlessly written and carefully, painstakingly crafted ... Paints a portrait of a disappearing journalistic world — of newspapers, mostly, but also of magazines. It contains not a whiff of sentimentality; Trillin is too clear-eyed for that. But readers might feel bereft, noting how much has changed in the 60 years since he started writing, how diminished newspapers have become, how robust newspaper wars once were, how many larger-than-life writers have died or moved on. In short, how things used to be in the trade.
This book is buoyant and crunchy from end to end ... Trillin’s understatement matters because through it he resolves the traumas of life into humane comedy ... Maybe he included this lesser stuff for the same reason he once proposed that The New Yorker intentionally print one cartoon in each issue that isn’t funny.
Calvin Trillin is an annoyingly good writer ... Clearly, he's good. The annoying part is that he's good at everything. Trillin immerses himself in his stories. He doesn't just interview the subject of his articles, but also their friends and their friends' friends. Also, he is simply a gifted writer, with a stylish way with words ... There are so many quotable sections, I don't know where to stop.
