Synopses & Reviews
A reissue of Calvin Trillin's memoir of his relationship with a brilliant but tragic Yale classmate that is also a rumination on social change in the 1950s and 1960s.
Remembering Denny is perhaps Calvin Trillin's most inspired and powerful book: a memoir of a friendship, a work of investigative reporting, and an exploration of a country and a time that captures something essential about how America has changed since Trillin and Denny Hansen were graduated from Yale in 1957. Roger "Denny" Hansen had seemed then a college hero for the ages: a charmer with a dazzling smile, the subject of a feature in Life magazine, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a varsity swimmer, a Rhodes scholar...perhaps a future president, as his friends only half-joked.
But after early jobs in government and journalism, Hansen's life increasingly took a downward turn and he gradually lost touch with family and old friends before eventually committing suicide an obscure, embittered, pain-racked professor in 1991. In contemplating his friend's life, Calvin Trillin considers questions both large and small what part does the pressure of high expectations place on even the most gifted, how difficult might it have been to be a closeted homosexual in the unyielding world of the 1960s Foreign Service, how much responsibility does the individual bear for all that happens in his life in a book that is also a meditation on our country's evolving sense of itself.
Review
"Eloquent, heartfelt...an investigation worthy of Mr. Trillin's intelligence and acuity...the pages just almost turn themselves." New York Times Book Review
Review
"Trillin is recording a time, a place, and an illusion...which Trillin punctures gracefully and not without tenderness." New York Newsday
Review
"[A] memoir on an uncharacteristically somber subject....What makes this gloomy post-mortem bearable and even fascinating is a smattering of Trillin's one-liners, as well as shrewd observations....[A] fine meditation on one life's aborted promise, the crippling burden of anticipated success, and the mysteries of the human heart." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[A]n elegiac, disturbing, and altogether brilliant memoir....A work to be talked about and treasured." Boston Globe
Review
"[I]n [Trillin's] search, we necessarily see so much more of the troubled later years than of the golden years that we ultimately lose sight of the magnitude of the change in Hansen." Library Journal
Review
"With a sharp and tolerant eye, a lot of old-fashioned reporting and a controlled, clear, amiable style, [Trillin] opens up characters and digs into actions, telling a good tale along the way. Although he applies his skills in [this book], the subject is not quite there. Denny is much described and analyzed but only dimly captured, and the passages on the 1950s, that much chewed-over decade, don't have much juice." Walter Goodman, The New Leader
Review
"[Trillin] provides a superb portrait of an individual, a group and a vanished sensibility....As the author acknowledges, almost all of Denny's generation have found themselves bent with expectations that will never be realized. Unpacking, Trillin provides a class act in every sense of the word." Time
Review
"Whether or not Roger Hansen was a hero for his time, Remembering Denny is a book for today. The book is not so much about Hansen's life and death as about the feelings of Trillin and other friends about his life and death, and about their feelings about their feelings." The New Republic
Synopsis
A reissue of Calvin Trillin's memoir of his relationship with a brilliant but tragic Yale classmate that is also a rumination on social change in the 1950s and 1960sRemembering Denny is perhaps Calvin Trillin's most inspired and powerful book: a memoir of a friendship, a work of investigative reporting, and an exploration of a country and a time that captures something essential about how America has changed since Trillin--and Denny Hansen--were graduated from Yale in 1957. Roger "Denny" Hansen had seemed then a college hero for the ages: a charmer with a dazzling smile, the subject of a feature in Life magazine, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a varsity swimmer, a Rhodes scholar...perhaps a future president, as his friends only half-joked. But after early jobs in government and journalism, Hansen's life increasingly took a downward turn and he gradually lost touch with family and old friends before eventually committing suicide--an obscure, embittered, pain-racked professor--in 1991. In contemplating his friend's life, Calvin Trillin considers questions both large and small--what part does the pressure of high expectations place on even the most gifted, how difficult might it have been to be a closeted homosexual in the unyielding world of the 1960s Foreign Service, how much responsibility does the individual bear for all that happens in his life--in a book that is also a meditation on our country's evolving sense of itself.
About the Author
Calvin Trillin is the author of twenty books, including
Family Man (FSG, 1998) and
Messages from My Father (FSG, 1996). He writes a weekly column for
Time and a weekly poem for
The Nation. He lives in New York City.