Q&A | Calvin Trillin on his soul mate and the book he wrote to honor her

Bud loves Alice. Always has, always will.

Calvin Trillin — Bud to family and friends — and his wife, Alice, had one of the great love stories of real-life modern American literature. Well, one of the least boring, anyway.

Trillin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1963. Though he's done a great deal of serious reporting, he's best known as one of America's top humorists. It's the funny stuff that endures. Take his enthusiastic searches for authentic, unfussy food — Trillin once made a closely reasoned argument for replacing the Thanksgiving turkey with spaghetti carbonara. He has pontificated on the proper way to eat Louisiana boudin (in the parking lot of the store where it was bought).

Alice was a frequent guest star in Trillin's writing (along with their two daughters, now grown), and his attitude toward her was never less than bemused, but always adoring. Alice emerges as Bud's clear soul mate, albeit the more sensible half of the partnership. "Now that it's fashionable to reveal intimate details of married life," he once noted, "I can state publicly that my wife, Alice, has a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day."

They met at a party in 1963, married 18 months later and were together until Alice's death at age 63 — on Sept. 11, 2001, as doubly cruel fate would have it. Her heart had been weakened by radiation therapy for lung cancer in the 1970s (her parents were smokers, though she was not).

In her honor, Trillin has written "About Alice" (Random House, 96 pp., $14.95) — slim, bittersweet, deeply moving and beautifully written. Avoiding grief-stricken self-pity, it creates a full picture of a woman who was vibrant, accomplished, engaged, beautiful and completely lovable.

In Seattle recently, Trillin drank a smoothie and talked about why he loved Alice — and loves her still. This is an edited excerpt.

Q: I wish I could have met Alice. So, I imagine, do millions of your other fans. You write that many people sent you notes after her death, saying they didn't know her but felt they almost did.

A: Yes, though Alice's response would have been, "They're right — they don't know me." She wouldn't have said it indignantly — just stated the fact that the persona in my writing was her sitcom mode.

That persona wasn't her, though it was close in some ways, in that she really was the most sensible grown-up in the house. But she felt the persona made her sound like a dietician in sensible shoes. She was cast as the straight person — which she was — but that's not a whole person.

Q: Didn't the book start as a New Yorker piece?

A: I didn't have plans to write about Alice. I'm not saying I would never have — I wrote a book about my father in the 1990s and he died in 1967, so there's no statute of limitations.

But (New Yorker editor) David Remnick asked rather tentatively if I had thought about it, and the fact that he was receptive made me think, "Well, maybe it's worth trying."

Q: Is it a little odd, to be a famous funny-guy writer talking about such a solemn subject so close to your own heart?

A: Yes, I was concerned about the book tour, whether I wanted to do it at all. My daughters were a little concerned, too.

Originally, I wasn't going to answer questions, just read. But I began at a friendly bookstore not far from my neighborhood in New York, and found I could answer questions OK. I've had moments where I've had to stop and sort of collect myself, but all in all it's been fine.

The hard part's when I get questions that I don't know anything about, like about making a good marriage. I can't believe people are actually good or bad at it. I think mainly you just meet the right people. It's not satisfying to people to tell them that luck has a lot to do with it, but in fact I think it's true.

So that's my advice: Wander into the right party. Just that. It's like the advice I give about childrearing: Try to get one that doesn't spit up. The rest is up to you.

Q: That's what you told me 16 or so years ago, just before my daughter was born.

A: Did it work?

Q: Yeah, very well.

A: See?

Q: When you met Alice at that party in 1963, you spent the evening trying desperately to impress her. She sometimes claimed that you peaked then — that you were never again as funny. But she married you anyway.

A: Yeah, in a London registry office in August of '65.

Q: The jacket photo [of radiant Alice and beaming husband, holding hands] was taken that day.

A: Great picture, but totally accidental. After the ceremony, the registrar said, "I hope you don't mind — one of the papers phoned and said, would we let them know if we had a pretty bride on Friday the 13th? So there might a photographer out there."

I had friends on the London papers, and I thought this was a prank. I was prepared to walk out with my new bride and hold my hand up in front of my face and say, "We're just friends!" But the photographer was so palpably authentic that I missed the line completely.

Q: You mention an obituary headline for Alice that called her, "Educator, Author, Muse," and remark they got the order right.

A: Yes, I once dedicated a book: "I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice." That was literally true. Partly, I still wanted to impress her. But it was also because she was a good reader — she had good taste and instincts.

Fortunately, she liked what I wrote. I guess you could get married to somebody who didn't. But I was lucky.