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Trillin

Reporters love murders. In a pinch, what the lawyers call "wrongful death" will do, particularly if it's sudden. Even a fatal accident for which no one is to blame has some appeal. On a daily newspaper, in fact, an accident is one of the few news events whose importance can be precisely measured by the editors who decide how much space and prominence each story is worth. In general, the space it is assigned varies directly with how many people were killed. Sufficient loss of life can elevate an accident story into a category of news that is almost automatically front-page--a disaster.

I love this opening from Calvin Trillin's book of essays, "Killings." It reminds me of the work of Janet Malcolm, another writer who is gleeful and blunt in her assessment of a journalist's opportunism. "Reporters love murders": A simple, shocking sentence. The joke continues. Reporters are like vampires, sucking the tragedy out of others, living off that tragedy. If you're dealing with "just an accident," that's a shame, but if the accident resulted in *many, many* deaths, then you might still find yourself "elevated" to front-page status.

I have always been attracted by stories of sudden death. For fifteen years, starting in the fall of 1967, I traveled around the United States to do a series called "U.S. Journal"--a three-thousand-word article every three weeks from somewhere in the country. (Magazine writers asked, "How do you keep up that pace?" Newspaper reporters asked, "What else do you do?") Once or twice every year I found myself at the scene of a killing. When I began writing somewhat longer pieces, the attraction continued....

The joke marches along. Trillin is "attracted" to sudden death, like a teenage boy circling a girl at a high-school dance. Trillin also continues to give us an inside look at his trade: The gulf between magazine writers and newspaper writers is indicated by that comical observation about "How do you keep up?" and "What else do you do?" No one else I can think of has defined so clearly what is powerful about true crime. Done well, a true crime story not only gives you a lurid account of a violent death--but also gives you insight into how other people *live* ....A true crime story is a window for you, a way for you to see another culture, another piece of your country, far from the plot of land you yourself have landed on.

Trillin has an effortless way of being interesting. It doesn't matter which subject he picks. You can read him on race. You can read his profile of his wife or his profile of his father. ("Dad said, You have to be someone, so you might as well be a mensch.") You can read Trillin on food ("It's really a way of writing about my family") or on Yale and the Rhodes Scholarship. (To find Trillin's Yale work, turn to "Remembering Denny," an upsetting account of the rise and fall of a friend, a man who committed suicide and baffled the people around him.) I like to read Trillin because I sense his boyish enthusiasm; he looks at the world with wonder, regardless of the topic he has selected. That's a treat--and it's inspiring.

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