be, what we should give away and when. but i'd grown up with no money. and when i -- when i found part of the attractiveness of it is that it does, a, give you freedom and, b, you can help out worthy causes. >> there's lots of models. >> i'll just share one other with you that i'm particularly taken with now. and this has to do with education, which i think a lot of how we reform education america will depend on the public/private partnership. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. and now calvin trillen presents a collection of his essays from the past 40 years. topics range from the economy, politics and the media. this is about 40 minutes. >> so tonight i am thrilled to be welcoming the dashing and

legendary calvin on the occasion of his new book quite enough of calvin trillen, 40 years of funny stuff. calvin has been a good friend of the strand. he has been a guest speaker before. he is often frequently seen cruising our stacks. so contrary to the title of this featured book, we can never get enough of calvin trillen. calvin has been a staff writer for the new york since 1963 and he's written a weekly piece of economic verse for the nation since 1990. his nonfiction books -- we have a lot of his books over here, include american pride, adventures of a happy eater, alice, let's eat, further adventures of a healthy eater. third helpings of a third respect, a lot of books. more uncivil liberties and travels of alice and about alice. his works of nonfiction include rum struck, loader, templar

isn't going out and american stories. his books averse include obliviously on his sails which is the bush administration and rhyme. a heck of a job, which is more of the bush administration in rhyme. calvin, he has written and performed two-man shows at the american place theater in new york city. in quite enough of calvin, calvin addresses the subjects including the horror of witnessing voodoo economics ceremony, a collection it features poems about sarah palin, john edwards, bill clinton and chris christie. frankly, i think it's hard to be dull with material like that. but so for tonight's format calvin is going to talk and then we're going to open up this mic for questions from you. if you don't mind, i'll pass along the mic, if you don't mind just standing up because we have a really big audience so everyone can hear and so calvin will stick around and sign copies of his book.

so please welcome me enjoining one of america's greatest humanist back to the strand. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. >> thank you. >> well, one thing i should say about that introduction is that nancy asked me if there's anything special i wanted her to say. i thought it would be nice to work the word "dashing" in there. [laughter] >> that may explain that. it's nice to be at the strand. it's nice to see fred who i've known for years. i actually knew his father, so nancy is the third generation of strand proprietor that i've known. this is a book of so-called humor. i'm sometimes asked, aren't you ashamed of making a living by writing snide, underhanded

remarks about respectable people? [laughter] >> and my only defense is, it's not much of a living. [laughter] >> there's a piece in here about dealing with the wiley and parsimonious picturesque navaski. i think the first humor piece i published was in a article. they were not big payers. i sent them a piece and they accepted it and sent me a bill. [laughter] >> and then navaski became an eastward of the nation and asked me if i would write a column for the nation. and i said, how much are you thinking of paying for each column? and he said, something in the high two figures.

[laughter] >> i said, what do you mean, well, we've been paying 65. i said that sounds like the middle two figures to me. so i got my high powered literary agent, robert slowly on the phone and i said play hardball slowly and he got them up to 100. a month or two after i started, navaski came to me and said what about these quotes? i said what quotes are those? and he said did john foster dulles rachel saw you can't fool all the people all the time but you might as well give it your best shot? i said, richard, at these rates you can't expect real quotes. [laughter] >> so there's some things in the book about the wiley and parsimonious navaski.

there's a bigraphal section and i thought since we were in a bookstore i would start by reading something from the biographical section from -- i guess you would call it my childhood in kansas city. there's a quote at the beginning of each section, and the one in the biographical section says, i found that a lot of people say they're from kansas city when they aren't. just for the prestige. [laughter] >> this is a piece called chubby. it's common these days for memoirs of childhood to concentrate on some dark secret within the author's ostensibly happy family. it's not just common. it's pretty much mandatory. memoir in america is an atrocity arms race. a memoir reveals incest that's trumped that reveals bestiality and that is driven from the bestseller list by one that

reveals incest tuus bestiality. as much as i would hate this getting around in literary circles in new york, the fact is that i had a happy childhood. [laughter] >> at times i've imagined how embarrassing this background would be if i found myself discussing childhoods with other memoirists late at night at some memoirist hangout. after talking about their up-briggs for a while, the glue-sniffing and sporadically violent grandmother or the family tapeworm, they look toward me. their looks are not totally respectful. they are aware that i've admitted in print that i never heard my parents raise their voices to each other, they have reason to suspect from bits of information i've let drop from time to time that i was happy in high school. i tried desperately trying to think of a dark secret of my upbringing, all i could think of was chubby the collie dog, i

said well, there's chubby, the collie dog which is a true story. chubby the collie dog they repeat. there really was a collie named chubby. i wouldn't claim a secret about him is traumatic which explains another mysterious loyalty that i had to the collie stories. we owned chubby when i was 2 or 3 years old. he was sickly. one day chubby disappeared. my parents told my sister sookie, the oppressor we call her. [laughter] >> and me that he had been given to some friends who live on the farm so that he could thrive in the healthy country air. many years later, i was from home on vacation from college and chubby's name came up. i asked why we'd never gone to visit him on the farm. sookie looked at me as if i'd suddenly announced that i was thinking about eating the mashed potatoes with my hands for a while just for a change of pace.

there wasn't any farm, she said. that was just what they told us. chubby had to be put to sleep. put to sleep, i said? chubby's gone? somebody, my mother, i think, chubby would have been gone in any case since collies ordinarily don't live to the age of 18. isn't this late for me to be finding this out, i said? my father said it's not our fault if you're slow on the uptake. [laughter] >> i never found myself in a memoirist gathering that required me to tell the story of chubby. but as it happened, i did relate this story in a book. a week or two after it was published, i got a phone call from sookie. the collie was not called chubby, she said. the collie was called george. you were called chubby. [laughter] >> there's one section here

called 20 years of pauls, one poem each. and the quote leading that section, i believe in an inclusive political system that prohibits from public office only those named -- only those whose name have accurate meter or difficult to rhyme, such as george bush. [laughter] >> i mean, i know he sounds like an easy rhyme. it rhymes with tush but that's disrespectable. fortunately when george h.w. left office he had a lot of middle names so i wrote a poem farewell to you, george herbert walker, though, never treasured as a talker, your predicates were prone to wander gnomeless of alone. you did your best in your own way, the way of greenwich country day so just relax and take your ease and never order

japanese. here's one about mitt romney. mitt romney is doll it's called. yes, mitt is so slick of speech and slick of garb he remains us all of ken, of ken and barbie so quit to shed his moderate regalia he may like ken be lacking genitalia. [laughter] >> and here's one about sarah pali palin, if i can find it. it's a barbra streisand sun by sarah palin on a clear day i see russia. on a clear day i said russia so i know world affairs. don't say no way, though i know elites mock. it's osmosis that does it, well, that and our prayers. a

ando biden see the state. it's me who knows the score, on a clear day i see russia, fred you can hum along if you want and the others. then i thought i would do a timely piece tonight. i'm not usually that timely. this is called crystal ball. this is a section of the book called criminal justice criminals justices but probably no criminal justices. and the quote is, i'm an absolutist on the first amendment except for people who show slides of their trip to europe. they should be arrested. [laughter] >> if they can't be held, they can at least be knocked about a bit at the station house.

how many dead on predictions does a person have to make to get a little credit around here? in a book i published in 2006 called a heck of a job, more of the bush administration in our time, here's what i said in one of the nonrhyming passages about the so-called shoe bomber of 2001. i'm convinced that the whole shoe bombing business was a prank. what got me onto this theory was reading that the shoe bomber a muslim convert named richard reid had been described as someone who knew him well in england as very, very impressionable. i had already decided that the man was a complete bozo. he made such a goofy production of trying to light the fuses hanging off his shoe that he practically asked the flight attendant if she had a match. the one terrorist in england with a sense of humor known as khalid the troll had said i bet i can get them all to take their

shoes off in airports. [laughter] >> so this prankster set up poor impressionable reid and won his bet. now khalid is back there cackling with the thought of all those americans exposing the holes in their socks on cold airport floors. if someone is arrested one of these days and is immediately because of his m.o. referred to in the press as the underwear bomber, you'll know i was on to something. that's right. i predicted the underwear bomber in 2006. you could look it up. around the same time, i repeated the prediction public appearances and as i remember a couple of times on television. i firmly believe in this world of ever didiminishing of ever replaceable resources using a line only once represents the sort of wastefulness that our society can ill afford. and what tran spider on christmas day three years later?

another bozo tries to blow a hole in the airplane and only sets his underpants aflame which made him ill-equipped for the 72 virgins if he was rewarded and where was this bozo educated university college of england a mere distance from the khalid the troll has that name been mentioned even once in the endless press and television interviews with so-called security experts who praddle talking about connecting the dots and iterations of cooperation and eliminating stovepiping? no, not once. not once have the people who pontificate from washington on sunday morning talk shows, the people i refer to as the sabbath gas bags. [laughter] >> say somebody should have followed up on his underwear trip. not once has anybody considered the possibility that after the

shoe bombing scheme worked to persian he mentioned in his cell when they have a few years of taking off their shoes i bet they can expose their private parts to full body scanners. ..

>> i'm not here to post, but we think is the first parking novel ever written. this is a little second of it's called tepper isn't parked in front of rest and daughters. as tepper glanced up from the newspaper to make a quick perusal of the sunday shoppers, he knows one of the counterman from russ and daughters were standing on the sidewalk about to tap on the window. recognizing the counterman from past trips, tepper slid open the passenger, over towards the passenger door and rolled down the window. how we doing, the counterman said, then began to lean on the door? fine, how are you? i thought i recognize you, the counterman said. you come to buy locks. herring salad usually. sometimes the wife likes locks. i knows you under for a few sundays now, the character that's it i figured maybe you're having trouble getting around.

i could get you something. thanks anyway, tepper said. i don't need anything today. the counterman start to straighten up, then he said are you waiting for somebody? know, tepper said. oh, well, the counterman said, i guess i should get back. he smiled in a friendly way and finally he said, just your parking? exactly, tepper said. i'm just your parking. the counterman didn't say anything for a while. then he said you were just your parking because you feel like it? if someone wants this spot, it's too bad because it is yours and it is a legal spot. a lot of times i'd like to something myself. like this. it can get pretty irritating with some of these customers. they will say give me a nice whitefish. so i will say, one whitefish coming right up, cheerful, pleasant. and they will say, a nice whitefish.

[laughter] can you imagine? this happens every sunday at least once. i can prevent it of course. you know how i could prevented. i suppose of course, the counterman interrupted. i could just repeat after them exactly, a nice whitefish, but i won't. i won't give them the satisfaction. what i really feel like saying when they correct me when i say one whitefish coming up, and they say a nice whitefish, is oh, i'm glad you said that because i wasn't going to get you a nice whitefish. [laughter] if you hadn't said that i would've looked for a whitefish that has been sitting there for a long time. and old greasy whitefish because that's what we serve your mostly. that's our specialty. that's a we've managed to stay in business all these years. that's why the rows them is synonymous with quality and integrity for maybe 75 years because base to sell their

steady customers rotten, stinking whitefish. that's why the boss gets about four in the morning to go to us apart so we can get the greasy whitefish before his competitors. otherwise if you slept until a civilized hour as may be deserts, he might get stuck with nice whitefish. there's always something, tepper said. the counterman looked exhausted from his speech, but could only nod and say. he glanced in the store and look back at tepper. do you mind if i sit with you for a minute? it looks like it's quite in the. i could take a little break. why not, tepper said. he opened the passenger door and slid over to make room for the counterman. thank you. [applause] >> now, i'm sure all of that material has given you some profound questions. [laughter] does anybody have a question?

>> does the fish? -- [inaudible] does the fish? good? >> well, i find that the fish at russ and daughters? good. russ and daughters are sort of like the bastogne. i guess they are now on their fourth generation. you guys are one generation behind, i think. they were, i think joel ross was the founder, and now they have his great grandchildren running it. >> did you watch it all any of the republican debates these days? and if so, i would love to hear your comments, especially mitt romney. >> the question is whether i've watched any republican debates. i tend to watch people talk

about the debates rather than the debate. i find the debates with eight people so slow and boring. and they usually show the best stuff. i've written a little bit about rick perry. one of the things i wonder is why he wears cowboy boots and so talk about what an authentic texan he is. he was a cotton farmer. and you don't need horses to plant cotton. if you are really authentic i think he would wear bib overalls. have kind of a hayseed coming out of his mouth. he spin a little disappointing, and when michele bachmann said that god had sent her -- said hurricane irene to warn us against all this spending, i wrote a poem that said why be so hard on vermont? i mean, if god doesn't like the spinney, why did he pick on

vermont? they don't spend any more than anybody else but, in fact, they are sort of thought of as thrifty new englanders. so she's going to i think leave, too, and with donald trump out and christie out, and all the hair jokes and fat jokes are gone. [laughter] so i think, you know, in the way people in the small joke trade sort of hope for people like that to come around. and we think, if it's not good for the country we say the same thing that dentists say about tooth decay. it's a pity but where would business be without it? but then sometimes people are too obvious a target. i think dan quayle was one of those. the full title of a previously only sales, or the full poem the title came from was obliviously on peace sales -- i think perry

had worse marks than dan quayle. that is to line poem which i like to write because i get paid $100 a poem. [laughter] and i didn't think that was much and i look into out for which were paid, and at that time the highest paying magazine was "the new yorker" which paid $10 online. so always say you can understand why there's not a huge crowd in front of the poetry booth at the career day there. but i get $10 online economy, $100 a poem no matter what. so when i want that sort of buzz you get from working for the absolute top dollar in your field, i write a two line poem. [laughter] one of my early ones was about lloyd benson, the former texas

senator when he was named secretary of treasury. it was called lloyd benson, the short history of lloyd benson's dealings with special interest groups. was the man is known for broke will -- for pro-quote quickness. in texas that so people do business. that's $50 online. [laughter] that's not my shortest poem. my shortest poem is the political societal and philosophical implications of the o.j. simpson trial. that's the time. titles don't count. and the whole poem is, oj, oy vey. [laughter] now, maybe anybody shortest poem. >> you ever hear from politicians that say you're being too hard on me? >> no. i never have, and i've had this

sort of nightmare which i have during the day. one of the reasons i don't hear from them, they won't even admit they read the stuff, but also i don't run into him because i live in new york and most of them are in washington. but i start having of 10 or 12 years ago, i started having this sort of daytime nightmare that i went to a dinner party in new york, and all of them were there. and in my nightmare i a ride sort of early because i found a great parking spot. [laughter] and although the passionate the only other guest there is steve forbes. and the host isn't even home from the office yet and the hostess said i've got some things do in the kitchen, i'm sure you two have a lot to talk about. [laughter] and i try for an icebreaker. i say i guess you will be wanting to know why i refer to during the campaign as a dork robot. and before he can answer him al

gore comes across the room. easy and earth toned clothes, and he is irritated because i refer to him in a poem once as a man like object. [laughter] and then robert rosen was then i guess running for senator of new jersey came over, very angry because i suggested as a campaign slogan for him, never been indicted. and then here comes al d'amato, remember al d'amato? and again, it's a problem with a rhyme in april but i said al d'amato doesn't rhyme with much, and people say to me but i'm from kansas city and i can't bring myself to say tomato. but it does rhyme with sleaze ball obligato. and then here comes henry kissinger.

i think, my god, henry kissinger, still mad about that one little war criminal mention? talk about hypersensitive. but it turns out that's not what he is mad about. i guess i said in a column once why is it that george shultz, former secretary of state with a ph.d is was referred to as mr. schultz, and hendrick kissinger, former secretary of state with a ph.d is always called dr. kissinger? and the one thing i can figure is maybe decent you had a podiatry practice on the side. [laughter] >> but the dinner party has not happened. i tell you who i hear from is animal people. and the animal people i don't mean people who were thrown clear of a plane wreck in africa and raised by a bunch of iran to thank the many people with special concern for animals. i mentioned once in a column that corgis appear to be a breed

of dog that seemed to be assembled from parts from other breeds of dogs. [laughter] not the parts that those dogs are all that sorry about giving up either. [laughter] you may be surprised how many corgi owners there are in the united states, with computers and things. typewriters. anyway, i hear from the animal people. i wasn't one of the people who said that dan quayle has a stare like deer in headlights. some people say but i suspect the people who did write that got more come even though dan could have a very loyal following, got more letters from two people than quayle people. [laughter] spent my question is about wit and humor because it's such a difficult thing to achieve pick any of us have tried to write. is there an editing process you

write something, it's not funny enough, can you talk a little bit about making something -- >> yeah, i think, i think that, i took a course in college called daily things where you have to write a little vignette every day. they had a bunch, i later wrote about the course, and they had a bunch of rules. and one of the rules was individualized a specific detail. that seems to me a rule of humor. if you talk about a philadelphia cheesesteak tasting better, leaning against the car, sort of thing but it is a leaning against a pontiac it's funnier. not quite sure why. but i think, i think a lot of humor is in detail. and i think you can only try to please yourself because humor is

so subjective. and italy in the second row doesn't laugh it's just not funny to her and you can pull her fingernails out and she won't laugh. actually, she especially won't laugh if you pull her fingernails. [laughter] so i think all you can do is just fine something that you think is funny. i actually make myself laugh while i'm writing about every two or three years. so if i were taken hostage, i would not be completely without resources. i could have a little giggle every couple of years, but it's unusual. is usually something pretty silly. >> you just made me think when you talk about the dream and making yourself laugh, have you ever dreamed, literally, while sleeping, and woken yourself up laughing, with laughter? >> no. definitely not. i was a what am i doing up?

it's 2:30 a.m. so i have a frown on face. >> i'm sorry did that because i thought a writer, i mean, i can write but i'm not, not on your level, but i do dream and wake myself up laughing in my dreams. maybe just pathological, i don't know what, but i that -- >> maybe you should see somebody about that. >> yeah, right. [laughter] >> i richard blunk of nonfiction essays that i see is for sale tonight. could you speak about one of the essays? how long it took, how many months? and you are on the ground at the time. and you have any follow up on the woman who killed her husband or the pastor speak you're

talking about "the new yorker" pieces, the murder pieces. ordinarily, there are two different sizes of those. for 15 years i did a piece every three weeks for "the new yorker" around the country, and i would normally leave on a sunday night or monday morning if it was real close, and get back maybe -- i always got back in a work week. i got back may be friday or thursday night. i did that for 15 years. magazine writers usually say how do you keep up the pace, and newspapers report said, what else do you do? [laughter] some of those pieces are from that series, so that meant that i was roughly in the city for four or five days, and then spent the next week writing it.

so a lot of those pieces are two weeks. and there are some longer pieces in a book called american stories, but i found that the reporting didn't take that much longer. i felt, u.s. journal, the original series, was unusual for "the new yorker" and that in those days "the new yorker" didn't say this story should be about so many thousand words long. it was sort of against the velocity of "the new yorker," which is one of the reasons jesus ran so long, that everybody thought its peace deserves more. but the u.s. journal was specifically 3000 word piece every three weeks, and i was afraid of sort of creep if i went over that. so couple of the maybe 3200 words or something, but basically i stuck to that. and i felt that i wanted to ride

in a little more, just the fabric of the a little looser peace. but i found the reporting didn't necessary take that much longer, maybe i stayed over the weekend, but i usually got home, my girls were growing up then and so i went home. usually i found that if i started knowing what the answers to the questions were, probably time to go home. and reporting will fit into any space you want to fit into. you could stay for a year. at least i have always found that i have to be arbitrary, this will take about a week. >> your book on about alice is so touching and loving toward your wife. did you find that all the single ladies were contacting you after that? >> i found that if you carry one of those electric cattle prods

-- [laughter] you really don't even have to use it, just turning it on as they come at you. it'll do the trick. i think they should make personal models of those that are a little easier to carry around. no, i found that i did not need physical protection. and i was on a television show when it came out, and the interviewer said, some reviewer said that you were in touch, i can't remember who they said, your feminine selves or your sense of itself, or something like that. and i said i read that review and all i can think of was i hope none of my high school pals read that. i'll never hear the end of it. but there were nice responses to the book, which i had thought was going to be about alice, and

it turned out sort of accidentally to be about marriage and couples and things. >> i'm just about finished with the trilogy, which i had never read before. and i realized a lot of the writings, about 30 years ago, and my question is how is your appetite? >> it's holding up. >> great. and did you ever think or need to do any research at a fat farm? because for someone who's having three and four breakfasts and then made having a couple of lunches seemed like you might at some point have needed some physical therapy. >> right. know, the thing about those books is they are not exactly collections. i mean, i rewrote everything. but a lot of the raw material was from pieces from me at "the

new yorker" sometime or -- some travel magazine or something. so when you read them all together it seems like i do nothing but eat. [laughter] >> exactly spent or think about eating. and it, in fact, i mean, i like to eat, but he gives a false impression, and then people, people used to call me up and say, where shall i eat? they never started with this you might think it odd that i call you, not knowing your anything like that. unit, what's the best french restaurant in chicago. i have no idea about these things. so i think, i think when you push them altogether i see more passionate i seem for gluttonous than i am. although i'm not saying i'm not gladness at all spent i'm glad to see you still have an appetite, thank you. >> thank you. >> in a similar vein, what places now do you like around

the city that are sort of like out of the way? and i'm taking notes. >> nancy and i decided that would be the last question. [laughter] well, i like a lot of places but i live in the village. well, i used to live in the village. my house is still in the same place but i'm told i live in the west village now. the real estate people have decided that it is the west village. i usually describe the village as a place where people from the suburbs come on a saturday night to test the car alarms. [laughter] and so i find that i eat around my house, or in chinatown. and when i see something about a restaurant in that column in the times that says what's opening or something, i sort of reader from the bottom up. and if it's on east 64th street or west 78th, i quit reading but i think a lot of people in new york are that way. they eat sort of in their own

neighborhoods. well, thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> for more information about calvin trillin, visit thenation.com and search his name. >> when i look at why the country does well or why it doesn't, i think it's fundamentally a values thing. it's not natural resources but it's do you have, these are two crucial values. do you believe the future can be different than the present, and deeply you can control your future? these are not universal, someplace to have in some places they go. u.s. can we have exaggerated sense of how much control we have, but it's good for us to have the. >> your question for author and "new york times" op-ed columnist david brooks. he will take your calls, e-mails and tweets on a variety of topics including his best selling books.

david brooks, in depth, live today at noon eastern on book tv on c-span2. spent my connection to this foundation goes back quite some years. i have with great honor and boasting, i use a lot of the work, robert rector. in my own research and in writing. his work has been particularly helpful in terms of my own attempts to think differently about both political and economic liberation for african-americans. the united states is an incredible place. it stands out among other nations and in the world, and i recently had an opportunity to be reminded of how great this place is. at my family reunion, in alabama

come as a in of atmore, alabama. , it is the county that my family's plantation was. as i stand here before you as a descendent of slaves from the bradley plantation in alabama. slavery reconstruction, jim crow, the civil rights movement, this is my family's story of struggling and fighting for humanity and freedom and a context, any culture that was in stature with injustice and dehumanization. what's so amazing about this narrative, this story, is that not only does my family know

where the plantation is in a skandia county, we now own it. and there are members of my family currently living on it as free people who have property rights to it, codified and protected by the rule of law. now, how many countries in the world is impossible to have a group of people who were once slaves on a piece of property, a few generations later actually own the property that they were living on, that they were being enslaved on? so this makes this place absolutely amazing. yes, of course we notice the progress in our country by having a black family in the oval office. that are not to make countries around the world where you would see some dominant cultures rise

to that level, that status in just a few generations after movements like the civil rights movement. it's amazing to me, and i personally am delighted to think about what is it about this country, what is it about our founding principles that allow someone like myself to be a descendent of slaves, to be standing in front of a group of people, having earned a ph.d, standing front of this heritage foundation backdrop speaking to you about my second book? book? to me, it's just an amazing narrative about the potential of freedom and liberty and economic empowerment how this country offers to those who hav