CALVIN LOVES ALICE

In this week’s New Yorker, Calvin Trillin writes of his wife: “…I never stopped trying to match that [first] evening—not just trying to entertain her but trying to impress her. Decades later—after we had been married for more than thirty-five years, after our girls were grown—I still wanted to impress her. I still knew that if I ever disappointed her in some fundamental way—if I ever caused her to conclude that, after all was said and done, she should have said no when, at the end of that desperate comedy routine, I asked her if we could have dinner sometime—I would have been devastated.”

“Alice, off the Page” is Trillin’s touching portrait of his late wife who, over the years, was featured prominently in his writings. Almost five years after her passing, he wants to introduce readers to the real Alice—a beautiful, complex, intelligent, compassionate and COMPLETE soul. It is apparent that, even after all of these years, Trillin remains in awe of the girl who first caught his eye at a magazine party in 1963 (his advice to young people looking for someone with whom they can share a long and happy marriage: “Wander into the right party.”). His love for her is heartbreaking and his loneliness without her is almost palpable.

The dedication in his novel, Tepper Isn’t Going Out, which was published shortly after Alice passed away reads: “I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice.”

Everyone should be loved by someone the way Alice is loved by Calvin.