Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin Read Online Free
Author: Calvin Trillin
though, if I did not have reason to believe that the pants of my tuxedo actually belong to Joe LeBeau. Joe was a college classmate of mine—a rather rotund college classmate of mine, if you must know. I have reason to believe that just before graduation, at a black-tie party for which a large room was converted into a dormitory for a number of out-of-town guests who were wearing nearly identical tuxedos, Joe LeBeau and I came away with each other’s pants. That’s the sort of thing that can happen at a fancy college.
When somebody who sees me in my tuxedo asks a question that leads to the subject of Joe LeBeau (“Say, are you by any chance wearing somebody else’s pants, or what?”), I am often asked why I did not simply exchange his pants for my own once the mistake was discovered. Anybody who asks that never knew Joe LeBeau, for whom the phrase “not vulnerable to reason” was invented. As an example of LeBeauesque conversation, I repeat an exchange between LeBeau and an earnest fellow from down the hall who happened to be taking the same course in modern history:
JOE LEBEAU: The French and Germans were fighting on the same side then.
EARNEST FELLOW: But that’s impossible! The French hated the Germans!
JOE LEBEAU: Do you blame them?
I haven’t seen Joe LeBeau since graduation—I understand he’s a judge in California—but I occasionally run into other classmates who, as graduates of a fancy college, tend to be Wall Street financiers, impatient with those of us who have not just depreciated a factory or written off an airline. “What are you up to?” they always say.
“I am amortizing my tuxedo,” I tell them. “I am amortizing the hell out of my tuxedo.”
I can see my New Year’s Eve now. I am dressing for the evening. I calculate what my tuxedo is going to cost me to wear to the same party one year hence, assuming I wear it occasionally during the intervening months—to a turkey shoot, say, or a bris. Even taking the voluminous pants off the hanger gives me pleasure. I find it a bit awkward putting on Joe LeBeau’s pants, of course, but I love to start the new year by thinking of him trying to put on mine.
1983
THE MEDIA—LIBERAL ELITE AND OTHERWISE
“When I was a writer at
Time,
I tried to escape from the Religion section by writing ‘alleged’ in front of any historically questionable religious event—the ‘alleged parting of the Red Sea,’ say, or ‘thirty years after the alleged crucifixion.’ ”
Corrections
JANUARY 14—Because of an editing error, an article in Friday’s theater section transposed the identifications of two people involved in the production of
Waiting for Bruce
, a farce now in rehearsal at the Rivoli. Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr., a New York attorney, is one of the play’s financial backers. Hilary Murtaugh plays the ingénue. The two Murtaughs are not related. At no time during the rehearsal visited by the reporter did Ralph Murtaugh, Jr., “sashay across the stage.”
MARCH 25—Because of some problems in transmission, there were several errors in yesterday’s account of a symposium held by the Women’s Civic Forum of Rye on the role played by slovenliness in cases of domestic violence. The moderator of the symposium, Laura Murtaugh, should not have been identified as “an unmarried mother of eight.” Mrs. Murtaugh, the president of the board of directors of the Women’s Civic Forum, is married to Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr., an attorney who practices in Manhattan. The phrase “he was raised with the hogs and he lived like a hog” was read by Mrs. Murtaugh from the trial testimony of an Ohio woman. It did not refer to Mrs. Murtaugh’s own husband. Mr. Murtaugh was raised in New York.
APRIL 4—An article in yesterday’s edition on the growing contention between lawyers and their clients should not have used an anonymous quotation referring to the firm of Newton, Murtaugh & Clayton as “ambulance-chasing jackals” without offering the firm an
When somebody who sees me in my tuxedo asks a question that leads to the subject of Joe LeBeau (“Say, are you by any chance wearing somebody else’s pants, or what?”), I am often asked why I did not simply exchange his pants for my own once the mistake was discovered. Anybody who asks that never knew Joe LeBeau, for whom the phrase “not vulnerable to reason” was invented. As an example of LeBeauesque conversation, I repeat an exchange between LeBeau and an earnest fellow from down the hall who happened to be taking the same course in modern history:
JOE LEBEAU: The French and Germans were fighting on the same side then.
EARNEST FELLOW: But that’s impossible! The French hated the Germans!
JOE LEBEAU: Do you blame them?
I haven’t seen Joe LeBeau since graduation—I understand he’s a judge in California—but I occasionally run into other classmates who, as graduates of a fancy college, tend to be Wall Street financiers, impatient with those of us who have not just depreciated a factory or written off an airline. “What are you up to?” they always say.
“I am amortizing my tuxedo,” I tell them. “I am amortizing the hell out of my tuxedo.”
I can see my New Year’s Eve now. I am dressing for the evening. I calculate what my tuxedo is going to cost me to wear to the same party one year hence, assuming I wear it occasionally during the intervening months—to a turkey shoot, say, or a bris. Even taking the voluminous pants off the hanger gives me pleasure. I find it a bit awkward putting on Joe LeBeau’s pants, of course, but I love to start the new year by thinking of him trying to put on mine.
1983
THE MEDIA—LIBERAL ELITE AND OTHERWISE
“When I was a writer at
Time,
I tried to escape from the Religion section by writing ‘alleged’ in front of any historically questionable religious event—the ‘alleged parting of the Red Sea,’ say, or ‘thirty years after the alleged crucifixion.’ ”
Corrections
JANUARY 14—Because of an editing error, an article in Friday’s theater section transposed the identifications of two people involved in the production of
Waiting for Bruce
, a farce now in rehearsal at the Rivoli. Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr., a New York attorney, is one of the play’s financial backers. Hilary Murtaugh plays the ingénue. The two Murtaughs are not related. At no time during the rehearsal visited by the reporter did Ralph Murtaugh, Jr., “sashay across the stage.”
MARCH 25—Because of some problems in transmission, there were several errors in yesterday’s account of a symposium held by the Women’s Civic Forum of Rye on the role played by slovenliness in cases of domestic violence. The moderator of the symposium, Laura Murtaugh, should not have been identified as “an unmarried mother of eight.” Mrs. Murtaugh, the president of the board of directors of the Women’s Civic Forum, is married to Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr., an attorney who practices in Manhattan. The phrase “he was raised with the hogs and he lived like a hog” was read by Mrs. Murtaugh from the trial testimony of an Ohio woman. It did not refer to Mrs. Murtaugh’s own husband. Mr. Murtaugh was raised in New York.
APRIL 4—An article in yesterday’s edition on the growing contention between lawyers and their clients should not have used an anonymous quotation referring to the firm of Newton, Murtaugh & Clayton as “ambulance-chasing jackals” without offering the firm an
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