If you haven't read "Killings," please listen up. Calvin Trillin grew up in the Midwest--in Kansas City--and attended Yale. He developed an interest in writing. Writing, he says, is *not* primarily about sensitivity. Or an ear for dialogue. Or even curiosity. Writing is about confidence--first. A willingness to believe you have something to say, and then the chutzpah of "putting it out there." Trillin, it seems, has had many decades of confidence, confidence in spades. Beyond that, he also has the other stuff: curiosity, sensitivity. He finds outlandish characters and gets inside their minds. He makes us see how colorful figures operate. (He's like the director of "Gloria Bell," who found inspiration by turning a camera on his mother. Trillin seems to erase himself from his own stories, and to "meld" with the people he writes about.) Trillin also thinks outside the box. He says many people write about killings as a way of trying to ...