Calvin Trillin wins Thurber Prize for American Humor

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 03:16:00 +0000

Long-time New Yorker staff writer Calvin Trillin won the 2012 Thurber Prize for his book, "Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff." Trillin has the comic equivalent of perfect pitch," said judge and humor writer Jennifer Crusie. "He addresses everything from sausage to politics with clarity, elegance and a fine dry wit, never missing a note."

Trillin talked about his approach to humor in an interview with Mother Jones last year:

The craft that consumed me

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 14:59:00 +0000

It's rare that I'm not at work on some sort of craft project. I've often enthused about the need to make things; how it employs a unique set of muscles -- physical, intellectual, spiritual -- that I can attain a state of flow when making something that I almost never can when writing. Much like those of an athletic bent who are constantly succumbing to, or having to resist, the impulse to turn everything into a ball (or so I assume. I have never been moved to use a ball even as a ball), if you make things, all objects house the potential to be turned into something else. They fairly beg to be turned into something else.

The eggs were something of a departure, given their utter uselessness. Actually, strike that. That insistence on functionality over aesthetics is something of a lie I tell myself, possibly homophobic in nature, or else it's a penitential inoculation against my getting too big for my britches. If I stress utility, I will be less tempted to think of the visual stuff I make as "art," and consequently of myself as a you-know-what, a label really only rightly conferred by others. I've certainly lost myself in making purely ornamental things before -- lino cuts, paper cuts, snow globes, etc. -- but I do get an extra lift if the finished product is practical to boot.

Salon.com > David Rakoff

Calvin Trillin wins Thurber Prize for American Humor

The craft that consumed me