May 10, 2010 Issue

The item in this week’s issue that I wish to discuss is Calvin Trillin’s “Incident in Dodge City.” No one is more exuberantly subjective in his writing than Trillin, except – and this is a big exception – when he writes his “Annals of Crime” pieces. When writing about crime, Trillin totally banishes “I” from his narrative. For example, in “Incident in Dodge City,” at no time does he actually say he went to Dodge City to cover the story. Of course, there is such a thing as inference, and I think it can be reasonably inferred from, say, Trillin’s description of Bonilla’s sentencing hearing, that he was actually there and that his description is based on personal observation. But it could also be the case that he’s working from transcripts and other second-hand reports. Such inference would be unnecessary, of course, if Trillin had chosen to let us know what he’s up to the way, say, Janet Malcolm does in her “Iphigenia in Forest Hills.” Another aspect of Trillin’s strict use of third-person narrative to tell his story is that the source of some of his quotations is unclear. Here’s the way Trillin typically writes quotation in the story: “‘In a sense, we have two communities,” Jim Sherer, a former mayor who is one of the people encouraging Hispanics to participate in the life of the city, said recently.” Who did Jim Sherer say that to? Calvin Trillin? Maybe, but it’s not clear. I compared Trillin’s approach to crime writing with the way Mark Singer, who also wrote some crime stories for the magazine’s “U.S. Journal” series, approached it. For the most part, Singer keeps himself out of sight and writes mainly in the third-person. But when he quotes someone who spoke to him, he doesn’t hesitate to say so. For example, here’s a passage containing a quotation in his great “Who Killed Carol Jenkins?” (January 7, 2002): “When I asked the prosecutor, Steve Sonnega, for a prognosis, he said, ‘I think we’re making progress. I’m not willing to say how much, because I really don’t know. I think people think that if this case is going to be solved, now is the best time.’” I think Singer’s approach is preferable, but I confess that in Trillin’s case, and only in his case, it is fascinating to see the drastic lengths this usually ebullient subjective writer goes to in removing any hint of his personal self from the narrative. Reading “Incident in Dodge City,” I had the thought that in dissolving himself the way he does to tell Bonnilla’s story, Trillin is an artist. His aim, like Chekhov’s, is total objectivity.