American Stories Author:Calvin Trillin Calvin Trillin has always delighted in "the sort of stories you might tell in front of a fire." American Stories brings together twelve of these narratives— extended nonfiction pieces that have appeared in the 1980s in The New Yorker. The work is crafted with the elegance and insight that have earned Trillin a p... more »lace among our most accomplished writers.
The subjects in American Stories range from the tempests surrounding the nation's only drive-in movie critic, Joe Bob Briggs, to the rumors a murder unleashes among church-going citizens of Emporia, Kansas. Trillin deals equally well with the life and times of Edna Buchanan, the famed homicide reporter for the Miami Herald, as with the antic guerrilla tactics used by Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream to harass the conventional forces of Haagen-Dazs.
Funny, troubling, moving, and always revealing, American Stories evinces not only an extraordinary instince for fact and detail but also the narrative command that has won Trillin praise as "perhaps the finest reporter in America."« less