Alice, from Calvin Trillin
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
As the deadline poet for The Nation, Calvin Trillin is reliably tart and funny. But his sad and lovely remembrance of his late wife, Alice, in the March 27 issue of The New Yorker (on newsstands but not, unfortunately, online) is personal narrative at its best.
“A year before Alice died, I read an obituary in the Times of Mary Francis, who had been married to the English mystery novelist Dick Francis for fifty-three years. ‘I don’t think I shall write again other than letters now,’ Dick Francis was quoted as saying. ‘So much of my work was her.’ Apparently, Mary Francis had been such an active participant in her husband’s work, particularly in the matter of research, that he considered the novels a joint effort. She had been well educated, and Dick Francis was conscious of being a novelist who had left school at fifteen to become a jockey. The article implied that he might not be able to produce a book without her help. But I read his reluctance to write novels without her another way. As I understood what he was saying, she was the one he’d been trying to impress.”
(Is this kind of stuff why some people have it in for TNY?)
I had that issue of The New Yorker among the piles and piles …. but reading John’s post caused me to move it to the top. When John and I talked about the piece, we both had the same reaction: his words about Alice resonated with how we each feel about the “Alice’s” in our lives. For me, that’s the power of the piece: whether your partner is actually anything like Alice doesn’t much matter. Although the piece is quite devastating, Trillin puts forth the optimistic notion that we can each hope to find and keep a person who means as much to each of us as Alice does to him. And if and when that happens, there’s no better feeling in the world. And when that person is gone, there are no words to describe that feeling. Calvin Trillin, however, found the words. And, for good reason, it took him four years from her death to be able to write about his wife/muse/best friend.
Everyone who is married or in love, or contemplating being in love, or trying to imagine what it’s like to love and be loved, should read that piece. My husband left it open by the bathtub for me to read, and when I emerged from tepid water, wrinkled and tear-stained a dozen pages later, it was because he managed to put such brilliant words against something that one can’t normally describe. Having survived ovarian cancer at age 23, I found the ending even more heart-wrenching. How do you live your life if you know and have been told that you might not have tomorrow?