Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #176126 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Amazon.com
Calvin Trillin goes through life one step behind his appetite. He says he's just a Big Hungry Boy from the Midwest, but he's also one of the funniest American writers around, writing a palate pilgrimage through Europe and the Caribbean, where Trillin fantasizes of an Italian West Indies island of Santo Prosciutto "whose steep hills are green with garlic plants." Trillin gives free play to other obsessions (like taureaux piscine), but most of the travels are happily fueled by thoughts of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

From Publishers Weekly
Syndicated humor columnist, author ( If You Can't Say Something Nice ) and New Yorker writer Trillin publicly refers to his wife Alice as the principessa when they travel: "I found it improved the service in hotels." With Alice and daughters Abigail and Sarah, he here roams through France, Italy, Spain and the Caribbean, his selective eye and broad interests picking up on whatever intrigues him. In southern France, for instance, he pursues the vanishing arcade game of babyfoot and develops an obsession with the provincial event called taureaux piscine , a form of bullfighting requiring a small plastic swimming pool. In a mildly curmudgeonly tone, Trillin reveals a skeptic's attitude toward the French language and manners, though he's willing to forgive much of a country that gave the world the French fry. Food is never far from his thoughts, whether it leads him to farmers' markets in Provence, to sampling ethnic specialties on a stroll through lower Manhattan, or taste-testing the latest fast-food offerings in Paris. If he were a stand-up comedian, these essays would be called routines; whatever one calls them, they're sure to raise a smile. The peripatetic, insatiably curious Trillin is invariably entertaining.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Readers who know Trillin's work are justified in expecting from him something quite different from the ordinary travel book, and they will find it here. In this gathering of 15 recollections of holidays, many of which were written originally for periodicals such as The New Yorker , Trillin offers himself as essayist rather than descriptive writer, interpreter rather than guide. With him most of the time were his wife Alice and two daughters, and their experiences--renting a house in the south of France, shopping at the Central Market in Florence, and hanging around the small French town of Uzes--provide the themes of a readable, unexacting book of pleasant rambles and a multiplicity of small happenings and human stories. Those who like bright, inconsequential chatter, with many diverse scraps of information thrown in, will enjoy this book. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/89.
- A.J. Anderson, Graduate Sch. of Library & Information Science, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A travel-writing gem
This is a gem of the travel narrative genre. Yet it is found under the Humor category in the bookstore. It is wickedly funny. Trillin's enthusiam is a pleasure. The chapter called "Defying Mrs. Tweedie" is worth the price of the entire book. Typical of this book, the chapter is not only original and funny, it is a lyrical description of a travel destination, Taormina, with details of history, scenery, and food. I like Trillin's philosophy of travel, the leisurely approach. The book is full of inside jokes from chapter to chapter, like the I.W.I. (the imaginary Italian West Indies, where the food is superb) and his nickname for his wife Alice, "la principessa." (It improves the service in Italian hotels.) Nice insights on family travel, too. I finished the last chapter, turned the page hoping for another, and groaned when I realized the book was finished.

Trillin's best yet!
Trillin's light brand of humor is perfectly suited to his view of travelling with wife and children in tow. A European summer for the Trillin family consists of food (of course), swimming, and finding the best "babyfoot" -- that is, bar football. And how many authors do you know who get their kicks by yelling "tauraux piscine" out the open car window as the Provencal countryside whizzes by? Read it and enjoy.