 Good afternoon and welcome to all on this rather warm Ira Allen chapel afternoon We're delighted to have you with us, and thank you once again for many of you joining us for another really terrific annual Humanities lecture here at the University of Vermont This afternoon. We are delighted to welcome acclaimed author commentator and humorist Kelvin Trilling to our great university He hails from Kansas City one of America's most up-and-coming mid-sized cities and now lives in New York City our event today is another one of the very fruitful and ongoing Relationships between the University of Vermont and the Vermont Humanities Council Through this partnership event. We have welcomed many many distinguished Writers and celebrity authors to our campus and tonight We have another luminary among us that we will have the pleasure of hearing from In a moment unite him at the UVM Humanities Center Co-director Luis Bronco will formally introduce our distinguished guests But before that formal introduction I wanted to mention again that tonight's event is the kickoff for the Vermont Humanities Center popular first Wednesdays lecture series Which takes place throughout the fall and winter in our libraries throughout the state of Vermont and? I also want to publicly thank the executive director of the Vermont Humanities Center a dear friend a wonderful colleague Peter Gilbert who's with us tonight, Peter and very importantly I Also want to underscore this relationship between our University's Humanities Center a very important part of the core of our University and the relationship with the Vermont Humanities Council a number of first Wednesday's talks this year are being led by faculty from the UVM and It is because of their passionate and great interest that insight into the humanities and because of the generosity of Peter Gilbert and our friends at the Vermont Humanities Council as well Our wider Vermont community is the beneficiary quite frankly of This fruitful wonderful relationship between the University's Humanities Center and the Vermont Humanities Council And we hope that it continues to thrive for many decades to come Peter We look forward to that very important partnership between these two venerable Vermont Institutions and now I would like to invite my colleague Louise to join us the co-director of the University of Vermont's Humanities Center who will introduce our very distinguished guests this evening. Thank you all for being with us Thank you. Thank you President Sullivan and I want to extend a warm welcome and a happy hot afternoon to all of you of my own and What a pleasure it is to have Calvin Trillin with us today I do want to just take a moment and and comment on what President Sullivan was just saying about the Vermont Humanities Council. This is a tremendous Organization that we have here in the state of Vermont the first Wednesday's program is Really a stellar statewide Public humanities effort and the staff of the Humanities Council do a fantastic job putting it all together It's also underwritten by some very important organizations The Alma Gibbs-Donchian Foundation the Vermont Department of Libraries the National Life Group Foundation And we would normally be at the Brown L library in Essex Junction That's where we have our first Wednesday's programs in this area, but you'll notice two things We're not yet in October, which is when it usually begins And you'll notice this is a large crowd apparently There's a lot of people who have not quite had enough of Calvin Trillin In our area and we would totally overwhelm that space. So that's why we're here So mr. Trillin is going to be taking questions After the talk you'll find that there are some blank cards so if you have a Question grab a pencil and a card and send it to the aisles and then at the end of the talk I will collect those and and as he said don't ask him any questions that insult him So I'll be filtering that So let me say some words about Calvin Trillin We know he's from Kansas City. We know he's a long time New Yorker But do you know he's been spending his summers in Nova Scotia for a very long time? I didn't know that until a few weeks ago He's been described as a classic American humorist After graduating from Yale. He spent some time in the army And then began a career Writing at Time magazine based in Atlanta covering the civil rights struggles after about a year he was moved to New York and Probably to the chagrin of Time magazine Moved over to the New Yorker in 1963 and since then has published over 300 essays in the New Yorker His series US Journal which ran between 1967 and 1982 is really one of that magazine's Magnificent projects in which Calvin was tasked with traveling to different corners of the United States to report on the doings there the subjects of that series ranged from the murder of the farmer's wife in Iowa to an effort to write the definitive history of a Louisiana restaurant called Diddy's or As he wrote at the time to eat an awful lot of baked duck and dirty rice trying Some of the murder stories from that series were published in 1984 as the book killings and Which was described in one review as that rarity reportage as art It was just republished this year in case you're interested with new material For a number of years he's been a columnist and worked as a Deadline poet writing political poetry in verse for the nation and for a time He found his way back to Time magazine as a columnist these columns poems and writings have been compiled into five books and One of them quite enough of Calvin Trillian was awarded with a Thurber Prize for American humor in 2011 He's been involved in theater Performing some of his work on stage Including at the American Place Theater Which generated one review that declared him to be the Buster Keaton of performance humorists and Those of you who are attentive readers of the New Yorker now would also know that he's been a screenwriter for some family movies with some unusually complex plots and deep characters in Productions that has spanned several generations of Trillian Family members, but reviews of that body of work have been a lot more tempered apparently All told he's published over 20 books written across a diverse array of genres memoir short stories travelogue political poetry commentary Do I dare say food ethnography on too many topics for me to recount here? It seems that even if as he says a books life a shelf life is somewhere between milk and yogurt His books very quickly find their way to the bestseller list before they spoil So if there's anybody who might have some insights into the writing life It's this man Calvin Trillian. I want to welcome you to the University of Vermont. Thank you. Thank you Louise It's it's true that the shelf life is somewhere between milk and yogurt Some writers like Danielle Steele and Dan Brown Have a longer shelf life, but those books contain preservatives. It's nice to be back in New York I flew up this morning from New York I'm less concerned about airport security than a lot of people because Remember the shoe bomber several years ago The shoe bomber I decided was part of a prank You remember the shoe bomber as someone who was described as very suggestible And not very competent practically had the flight attendant Light a match to his shoes to carry out his mission And what I realized was that There was one Arab terrorist with a sense of humor collared the droll and he said I bet I can make them all take their shoes off in airports So he recruited this bozo and he He's he set him up for the for the shoe bomber And I wrote about this and I said you'll know if I that I'm right if If the next caught terrorist Is called because of his MO the underwear bomber? And it's a matter of fact There was an underwear bomber and I talked about that on television once and The Interview was shown to my seven-year-old grandson and he said Bobbo said underwear on television I'm talking about writing is sort of an occupation, which is it's not a profit center Ordinarily You don't get too much for a book I tried to get a New York ordinance through that the Advance for a book had to be larger than the check at the lunch at which it was discussed But the publisher said that was unrealistic and They would move to New Jersey if that or I knew they wouldn't move to New Jersey because there's no good place to have lunch in New Jersey The sort of highest form of writing I think everybody agrees is poetry and at least when I started doing verse The highest payer of of anybody was the New Yorker and they paid ten dollars a line for poetry So If you do the math You can understand why there's not a huge crowd in front of the poetry booth at the career day fair Ten dollars a line is not not so much Also satire is Paid very badly years ago. I wrote for a doomed magazine of political satire called monocle and Their their pay scale was so low that for one piece I sent in they sent me a bill What I've done mostly in my time is Journalism which I learned on the college paper. I learned objectivity which is We try to be equally inaccurate about both sides And as you heard from Louise, I started out at time. I worked in the South As a reporter it was a kind of a group journalism System then and the time was divided up into sections And I was what was called a floater for a time that is I moved from section to section So when the religion writer who knew quite a bit of our religion went on vacation I would come from show business and write with just as much authority as he had I Tried to get out of the religion section by Writing alleged in front of any historical religious event that I thought was at all questionable Like the alleged parting of the Red Sea alleged crucifixion And then as you heard I moved I moved to the New Yorker in 1963 So I've been there all longer than almost anybody except for Roger Angel and I mean among writers Roger Angel and Calvin Tompkins Our names are so close that I'm often credited with Calvin Tompkins stories, and I just try to look modest and shrug But I've been there so long that when people have a complaint about the New Yorker they sometimes write me and the first time the New Yorker had a photograph of a Actress with bare breasts. I got some mail Saying how shocking it was that this magazine always known for its elegant understated prose would publish such a picture and My only defense was they were small breasts So you might say the understatement is still there But as you heard from Luis, I have concentrated on America I Spent 15 years every three weeks going somewhere and at the same time there was a reporter for the AP named Jules Lowe who had a similar series So we formed something called the American Association of American Correspondents Covering America our acronym was Gling pack. We just like the way that sounded and there were only two of us in the organization and We met at O'Hare Airport where we spent most of our time changing planes and We only had one rule and the rule was you can't quote to Tocqueville That's how we kept the membership down I concentrated on America partly because I'm very bad at languages despite a summer at Middlebury studying Spanish I've often described my attack on the Spanish language as Looking like one of those drug raids you see with a battering ram Law enforcement officials who have the those windbreakers on that say FBI or DEA Mine says yo oblo espanol I've had I've had terrible experience with language. I tried to talk some people into Helping me read the wall signs on Chinese restaurants And finally somebody gave me a little card that says in Chinese I'd like some of what the people at the next table are having Which I carried for a while. I Knew a food and wine writer named Finnegan who Went to Tokyo to do some stories and took the trouble to learn enough Japanese to get around in restaurants and He was better at language than I am and He was in Tokyo and at a restaurant He saw something looked absolutely marvelous at the next table and he's called the waiter over and said Could I have some of what the man at the next table is eating the waiter looks Puzzled then he Walked over to the man picked up his plate Brought it to Finnegan. I've never been able to do that. I Speak a little French, but I don't do verbs. I Find that's what can ruin your vacation is verbs I used to do verbs like I even did what we would call at home Fancy Sunday-go-to-meeting verbs like usa-truv la plage Where does it find itself the beach? But I even gave that up the beach knows where it is So I think when I try to imagine my obituary and reporters get usually a pretty decent obituary sort of professional courtesy I Think of the subhead being monolingual reporters succumbs the other reason I Went around the country more than concentrate on Washington is that a lot of the Washington Reporting has to do with economics and I'm not good at economics and Partly because of math math was my worst subject I was never able to persuade the mathematics teacher that many of my answers were meant ironically And I had trouble with pie The pie are square kind of pie. I Read somewhere that some years ago the Texas State Legislature passed a resolution Changing pie to an even three And I was for it. I thought it sounds sounded good to me So I've never read much of written much about economics except when when George Bush said that Ronald Reagan's Was preaching voodoo economics. I Tried to imagine meeting a couple that had just come back from the Caribbean and they had seen a voodoo economics ceremony With a lot of chanting voodoo voodoo trickle trickle trickle trickle and The accurate smell of the books being cooked But that's about all I've ever done on voodoo on economics. Well, no, that's not true during the Clinton administration when Clinton said they were going to concentrate laser like on the on the economy and I thought well I don't know anything about the economy. So I thought I'd get in a sort of a Preemptive strike. So I wrote the question is what's going to happen? When the deficit reduction component begins to bite this was in its first budget that Clinton Put out that passed by one vote in the Congress I don't know what that means what's going to happen when the deficit reduction component begins to bite But it's I sounded good and component always adds a little gravitas to anything you say I think and Around the same time I started a column for the nation Oddly enough the nation had the same editor as the monocle the same person who had sent me a bill for a piece the Wiley and parsimony is Victor S. Novaski and So when he asked me if I wanted to do a column for the nation I said well, I know the talk of money causes you to break out in a rash, but How much were you thinking of paying? For each one of these columns, and he said something in the high two figures And I said How much is that he said well, we've been paying 65 I said that sounds like the middle two figures To me so I turned it over to my high-powered agent and said play hardball and He got him up to a hundred So a few weeks after I started doing the column Novaski came to me and said What about these quotes and I said What quotes are those and he said did John Foster Dulles really say you can't fool all the people all the time But you might as well give it your best shot. I said Victor at these rates. You can't expect real quotes Sometimes ask when it comes to the columns and the poetry if I'm ashamed to be making a living by making snide underhanded remarks About respectable public servants My only defense there is it's not much of a living and I'm also asked whether politicians get angry and Now they wouldn't really admit that they had read one of my columns I think And it's hard to reply to something like say one of my poems about Mitt Romney during that that campaign which was Yes mitzvah smooth of Speech and smooth of garb he reminds us all of Ken of Ken and Barbie So quick to shed his moderate regalia. He may like Ken be lacking genitalia Well The his press guy is not gonna write saying the governor actually has genitalia so They don't really get mad much. I I get a lot of Anger from animal people By animal people. I don't mean people who were as Babies thrown clear and an airplane crash in Africa and raised by orangutans. I mean people with a particular concern for animals I wrote a column once As you heard I live in Canada in this summer You get a lot of facts on CBC I Come home around Labor Day. I usually have enough facts to last me till February or March from CBC one of the facts I heard on CBC was that a hummingbird hummingbird weighs as much as a quarter and It makes you think of that. Well, there's a way as much as two dimes in a nickel And I thought how would you go about weighing a hummingbird because they're always in flight and then and then I wrote well We've all seen those nature documentaries where they Stun a will to beast with a stun dart and they put a little thing on his ear and they set him loose Do the same thing with hummingbirds? The hard thing is not hitting him with those little bitty darts. The hard thing is slapping him on the cheeks to bring him around A lot of hummingbird people didn't like that column. I once mentioned corgis Describe them as a dog seems to have been assembled from parts of other breeds of dogs and Not the parts that those other breeds were all that sorry about giving up Be surprised how many corgi eaters there are corgi owners there are in New York Also, I don't see Politicians in New York. They're mainly hang around Washington and I try not to go to Washington too often I did about 20 years ago. I started to have these awful daydreams that I Met politicians in New York. I see myself showing up to a dinner party and I'm one of the first people there The host is not even back from the office yet and the only other guest is Steve Forbes remember Steve Forbes so you right and I'm trying to make conversation and I say I guess you're wondering why I kept Referring to you during the campaign as a dork robot and then just then Al Gore walks in and he's got these kind of natural shades of clothing and He starts complaining about what I've said about him and and I and I said He doesn't like the fact that I once referred to him as a man-like object And then Alphonse Domotto comes And he was the senator from New York at the time and He's mad because I referred to him. I said well to Tomato Domotto is a very hard rhyme. It rhymes with tomato But I'm from Kansas City, and I can't bring myself to say to motto It does happen a rhyme with sleazeball obligato And then here comes Henry Kissinger Henry Kissinger looks very angry and I said could it be that little More criminal comment that I made talk about hypersensitive But that's not what's bothering him what's bothering him is I wondered in one column Why is it that George Schultz a former Republican Secretary of State with a PhD is always called mr. Schultz and Henry Kissinger a former Republican Secretary of State with a PhD is called dr. Kissinger The only thing I could figure is maybe Kissinger has a podiatry practice on the side at one point I quit writing the column for the nation and I Wrote a poem. It was about John Sununu Not the younger John Sununu, but the John Sununu who was in George HW Bush's cabinet and Sort of stuck out in the cabinet. He wasn't even shaped like the other cabinet members and He also he had Sununu had that quality that attracts the attention of people like me Which is that he always had to prove that he was the smartest guy in the room so I I wrote a poem called if you knew what Sununu and I sent it to the nation and and the Wiley and parsimony as Victor Esnovaski said He'd like to run that poem And I said I I'd like for you to write one on every issue It's not every week because as I pointed out The nation comes out only every other week in the summer even though the downtrodden are oppressed every day of the year But he wanted me to do one every issue and I said well, how much were you thinking of paying and He said even though it's shorter than the column will pay you a hundred dollars a poem. Well I Didn't think about it think much of it at the beginning But then I realized that if the New Yorker paid ten dollars a line and that was the top pay for poets if I Wrote a two-line poem. I would be getting fifty dollars a line And be the highest-paid poet in the country and So any time so I agreed to do it and any time I wanted to get that buzz you get For working at the absolute top dollar in your field. I would write a two-line poem When Lloyd Benson the senator from Texas would made the Secretary of Treasury I Wrote a poem that was The man is known for quo pro quiddness in Texas. That's that's how folks do business That's fifty dollars a line and I wrote one about George W. Bush when his college transcript was Revealed during the campaign to no apparent effect Obliviously on he sails with marks not quite as good as quails So that and I started to write shorter and shorter poetry. I think I've written one of the shortest poems ever written The title and that doesn't count in the length the title was something like the political societal and Philosophical implication of the OJ Simpson trial and the poem was OJ oi vei and Because of writing this verse for the nation my politics have changed. I'm now basically in favor of people Whose names rhyme easily My candidates were people like Ross Perot John McCain Not the Clintons the Clintons the Clintons Clinton is the orange of American presidents. It doesn't rhyme with anything Remember when during the Unpleasantness During the Clinton administration when Hillary sort of took the lead she went on the today program I Wrote a poem about it and so I tried to use I used her what we used to call a maiden name I don't think we use that term anymore or a name of origin or slave name Whatever you know And so it's up to our miss Rodham to prove the bill's White House isn't Sodom It's left to this adroit senior to show that it is just Gomorrah Bush, I actually tried to be nice to people when they left Bush is a bad name to rhyme but when George HW left I said in a poem farewell to you George Herbert Walker Though never treasured as a talker Your predicates were often prone to wander nameless off alone You did your best in your own way the way of Greenwich Country Day So just relax and take your ease and never order Japanese I've also written some memoir and And I'm I'm in a terrible disadvantage writing memoir because And I I wouldn't say this in New York, and I'm sure it's won't go back to New York Because it would be damaging to my reputation I had a happy childhood and This is a terrible disadvantage in memoir writing in America now because Because memoir writing is sort of an arms race an atrocity race That you have to have some hideous secret some glue sniffing grandma or something like that or some incest or bestiality or incestuous bestiality and I didn't really have that I went to a literary Conference in Key West once what I call the January dip in airfare is literary conference They always had a theme and the theme was memoir and I I saw myself Hanging out in some memoirs Hang out late at night with a bunch of memoirs, and they're all talking about their secrets That they've exposed and they say did you have a horrible secret in childhood the only secret I could think of what had to do with my collie dog chubby We had a collie dog when I was Maybe three or four and my sister Suki the oppressor was maybe five and He was sickly the chubby and suddenly he disappeared and we went to our parents and we said Where's chubby? and they said Chubby was sickly and and so we gave him to some friends who have a farm and That way he'll get it. It'll be out in the sunshine in the farm yard Frolicking with the other animals and I never gave it much thought and then finally chubby's name came up when we were all having dinner I think I was back from college, and I said Why don't we ever go visit chubby on the farm and Suki said there wasn't any farm you dummy Chubby had to be put down and I said chubby's gone and My mother said colleagues didn't usually Live 18 or 20 years. Anyway, I'd be gone in any case and I said yeah, but Why am I just finding out now? And my father said It's not our fault. You're slow on the uptake And I wrote that somewhere and about a week later. I got a call from Suki. She said The collie was not called chubby The collie was called George said you were called chubby. I I've written a song about my family and I was asked on a book tour Aren't you worried that someday your daughters will write about you and I said no I'm not worried at all because when they were five and eight. I had them sign a nondisclosure agreement The little one really couldn't write but I said just put an X there Nothing elaborate the same one Buckingham Palace uses for the servants. I think and I've done some some novels I Wrote a novel about working at a news magazine and that's the one where I admitted That trying to get out of the religion section I was the writer who wrote alleged in front of any religious event that I thought was all questionable and then I wrote a parking novel and Called tepper isn't going out I'm not here to boast, but we think it's the first parking novel ever written It's about a man who stays in his spot legal spot and doesn't move And there was a mayor in it named Duke of Ellie who was a showboating vindictive nasty mayor With an Italian name and some people thought it was a disrespectful Jive at Mayor Giuliani who was then the mayor and My my defense on that one was I Actually thought Giuliani behaved pretty well at 9-eleven Said that sometimes the paranoid control freak is just what the occasion calls for I thought I'd end by by Reading a column That has to do with with journalism and writing it's called corrections and Requires reading glasses January night January 14th Because of an editing error on an article in Friday's theater section Transpose 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. In New York attorney is one of the place financial backers Hillary Murtaugh plays the ingenue the two Murtaugh's are not related and no time During the rehearsal visited by the reporter did Ralph Murtaugh, Jr. sachet across the stage March 25th 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 women's civic forum is married to Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr. An attorney who practices in Manhattan the phrase he was raised with a 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 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 and Clayton as ambulance chasing jackals Without offering the firm an opportunity to reply also the number of hours Customarily billed by Newton Murtaugh partners was shown incorrectly on a chart Accompanying the article according to a spokesman for the firm the partner who said he builds clients for 35 or 40 hours on a good day Was speaking ironically There are only 24 hours in a day The same article was an error as to the first name and background of one of the firm's senior partners The correct name is Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr. There is no one named Hillary Murtaugh Connected with the firm Ralph W. Murtaugh as at no time played an ingenue on Broadway April 29th because of a computer error the early editions on Wednesday Misidentified the person Arrested for a series of armed robberies of kitchen supply stores on the west side of Manhattan the so-called Pesto Bandit The person arrested was Raymond Cullum 22 of Queens Ralph W. Murtaugh the third 19 of rye Should have been identified as the runner-up in the annual squash for kids charity squash tournament in rye Rather than is the alleged robber May 18th because of an error in transmission a four bedroom brick colonial house and weeping Ben Lane and rye Owned by mr. Mrs. Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr. Was incorrectly listed in sunday's real estate section as being on the market for $17,500 the home is not for sale In Sunday's edition the account of a wedding that took place the previous day at st. John's Church in rye Was incorrect in a number of Respects the cause of the error was the participate Participation of the reporter in the reception. This is in itself against the policy this newspaper should not have occurred Jane Murtaugh was misidentified in two mentions She was neither the mother of the bride nor the father of the bride. She was the bride It was she who was wearing a white silk ground ground trimmed in tool The minister was wearing conventional ministerial robes Miss Murtaugh should not have been identified on second mention as mrs. Perkins Since she will retain her name and since mr. Perkins was not in fact the groom The number of bridesmaids was incorrectly reported. There were eight bridesmaids not 38 Their dresses were blue not glued The bridegroom's name is not Franklin Marshall his name is emory Barnswell and he graduated from Franklin and Marshall College Mr. Barnswell never attended emory University, which in any case does not offer a degree in furniture stripping Mr. Barnswell's ancestor was not a signer of the Declaration of Independence and was not named Hector boom boom bandini The name of the father of the bride was inadvertently dropped from the article. He is Hillary Murtaugh Thank you. Hope you have questions. Did you write them down? We'll have some folks collect them In the meantime, I have the mic and so I get to ask some questions so I'm curious if there are any particular writers who Who who you really delight in who you look forward to the next thing that they're going to to write that you you in some way Sort of say wow this this Takes me someplace else that my own writing just doesn't take me Are there writers out there that really inspire you right now? Yeah, but I'm not sure that it's it's a matter of one or two. I mean, I think I think a lot of writers I think there there happen to be a lot of good humorous working now Garrison Keeler David Sederis and And good non-fiction writers John McPhee and and certainly a lot of novels and I And there's some novels whose work I've always read I mean like I read a Philip Roth book even if it's not his best book simply because he wrote the book There's some some novelists like that And do you and Billy Collins ever sit down together and and trade verse? No, I know Billy Collins. I met him at the January dip in airfare Slytherin conference. I think originally we were there for a week He's very popular Poet and I told him it was difficult to have lunch with him because there was always a swath of poetesses behind him Not not female poets with poetesses, which I think it was a certain long dress and floppy hats But he yeah, he's entertaining any and he's very accessible which is I think to certain people a curse but Appreciated by me So so here's a question if you were to write a two-line poem about Trump What would it be? Or have you done it? I think I've done it But I actually meant to bring some but I didn't bring it. I remember once saying I can't get the exact meter or rhyme but but It's it to feel better about having as a leader this phony Remember Italians survived burles Coney. I was trying to be encouraging to people. I Don't not sure that I feel very encouraged If writing isn't much of a living, how have you survived in New York City? Well, I I'd like to say writing Writing humor is not much of a living Writing nonfiction for the New Yorker. It's perfectly reasonable Also, I was talking to somebody last night about this So much of your life depends on The year you were born. I don't mean that in an astrological way. I mean We've got a brownstone in the village In 1969 And So I now live on a block that I couldn't afford to live on So it sort of depends on whether you hit the market right by chance So but I don't want to complain the New Yorker. I think has always tried to pay writers a reasonable amount I think we have a historian in the crowd. How did you develop your legendarily rigorous methodology as a historian? I wish I had a rigid methodology I was just saying to somebody today John McPhee has a book out about writing and so the essays that have been in the New Yorker and and After I read one of them I said that damn McPhee actually knows what he's doing Very irritating because most of us Who have to just muddle through don't know what we're doing until we do it and often not even then So he he has a rigid way of writing but but I just sort of fumble along Do you have any thoughts to share about the challenges facing journalism today? I'm sorry the what the challenges facing journalism today? well There's nobody who knows less about this than her than a reporter But I just read for instance by chance today the only freestanding book review section left in the countries at the New York Times there I think newspapers and I'm afraid magazines are sort of going the way of the dodo bird and And there are other there are other outlets of course And I it's hard to predict how what they are Particularly my daughters call me net boy, but I think they mean it ironically I'm not very good at computers and so I can't imagine but sometimes I got off the subway not long ago and a gentleman as we got to the top of the stairs said to me He was about my age. We were the only people reading newspapers on the subway. Everybody else was looking at a cell phone and I guess that's going to sort itself out, but I but I'm certainly not an expert on it So are you still a happy eater? Yeah, I'm not sure I eat as much as I used to eat I Am a happy eater. I I writing about food or eating started out as a Sort of way during those 15 years of going around the country to get some Comic relief not so much for the readers but for myself from doing stories about murders and controversies and everything and And then it turned into sort of a sideline But I've never known anything about food I mean, I don't I don't really cook and I I wouldn't know a proper beef Wellington from a non-proper unproper beef on and and and so I really have written about food as a way of making jokes and writing about other things but that doesn't keep people from Asking me expert advice. I think I think I'm a lesson in how easy it is to become an expert in this country Since I keep saying I don't know anything about it, and it doesn't do any good Well, actually there are some questions asking for advice What great meals do you have a new Brunswick new Brunswick? Oh Nova Scotia? Yeah New Brunswick is another province. I know you knew that Louise but We Canadians often complain about Americans not knowing much about Canada Remember that there was a guy named Rick Mercer. I guess he still is who used to go around the United States asking him questions like would you sign a petition to to Try to get Canadians to stop their habit of putting the sick and elderly out on ice flows and or Or Do you think that Canada which has a 20-hour day should shift to a 24-hour day? Make it easier 20 hour 20 hours with of course longer hours And Well, we have to That's the only place I cook is in Nova Scotia. I wrote a piece about it. I have either Three dishes or eight dishes depending on how you count for instance whether Whether stove involvement has to be there to make a dish For instance my famous smoke mackerel pate is Well, I might as well give you away the secret now a secret ingredient is smoked mackerel and the Cuisinard Little lemon to hold together on on birthdays and national holidays like Canada Day. I put a little mayonnaise and That's one of my typical recipes. That's about all I'm up to so So some some folks are looking for information on what you know about food here in Vermont So the one question is Since you just wrote a thing about Texas barbecue, what do you know about Vermont barbecue? I wasn't aware that there was a Barbecue is an interesting subject I I once went to a southern southern food Alliance event To give a speech and and their theme was barbecue and they had a speech on the politics of barbecue and the sociology and and and it's quite interesting and and one woman Marsha Kohn Ferris Gave a speech about she was raised Jewish in Arkansas. It was called. We didn't know from fatback and it was about What what? Jews did about barbecue that she didn't know about what I call the barbecue easement The barbecue easement was granted by the by the great rabbi of Joplin, Missouri Who was a noted Talmudist and pitmaster and he said that any animal? Any farm animal without without Gills Subjected to more than four hours of heat It's kosher. It's called the barbecue easement. You'll find it in some of the more obscure Talmudic studies president Sullivan. Maybe we need to start an Institute of barbecue studies up here, and he'll be our first director So so speaking of colleges and universities someone asked what Colleges or universities would you recommend a young poet or a rider seek out and and attend? Well, that's a good question. I I Princeton now of course has has a number of well-known writers on the faculty and I and who actually teach Unlike some sort of Kind of left-handed On the faculty not exactly teaching but fee is taught there for years Joyce Carol Oates is there Tony Morrison was there so I Took a course at Yale called daily themes which was which required It was called themes, but there was fiction little vignettes one-page vignette every day you had to have a one-page Vignette in the professor's mailbox every morning every weekday morning and and Yale was then on a grading system of numbers, but they use letters ABCDW and nobody knew officially what W meant, but most people thought it meant worthless Got and people got a lot of worthless And of course it turned out The first week you'd think well, this isn't so hard And then you realize the second week you pretty much used up your life experience And It was I talked I later did a piece on it and Called something like no telling no summing up and the I interviewed one of the professors who? He said he thought he had read more scenes of Boys and girls breaking up than any person in the history of the English language He knew about Walking away in the rain and throwing dishes and all this stuff Anyway, I think all now I think the the the sort of more traditional English departments always had a suspicion of teaching writing and so I I think it took a long time for a place like Yale to Have writing as a course Some folks want to hear stories from the New Yorker. So what so who were your favorite colleagues and writers at the New Yorker over the years? Got any great stories from some of those great water fountains stuff. Yeah Well, I don't know I Went to the New Yorker in 1963 and pretty much nothing happened for about 20 years I mean literally there was no and then right around the time of the I guess it was the 50th anniversary 75 there There was a lot of turmoil and then there was turmoil over over who would become editor and and But I used to get when I first got there. They had a very weird way of of Paying you That we had drawing accounts Which were sort of like advances against earnings and then when you did a piece You'd get a little chit giving you credit and then sometimes there were mysterious things like we used to get these little chits that said breakage And they would give me money for breakage And I hadn't I never have found out what that meant. I thought if I'm breaking something I Should pay But they're paying me. I I always said that the finances the New Yorker Were we're taken We're all handled on the 20th floor in a secret room full of female Jesuits with quill pens Who worked all night and then we got a thing, but I think the New Yorker is more For one of a better word regular eyes now It used to be sort of a quirky beast Now I think it's more run more like other places last question I'm gonna slightly modify it from how it was framed here, but when will subtlety and humor return to our land? Well, I think so I think there's there's still subtlety and humor. It just doesn't happen to be in the White House and and the I'm not so sure that that it varies from era to era. I mean people talk about the golden age of Benchley and E.B. White and and Perelman and then and then you look at it and And There there are only five people that when and I think that they're all they're never more than a fairly small group of people writing particularly Short humor and and and it doesn't mean that it's brain surgery It just means that few people have that little funny quirk in their heads And I'm not sure it's less now than it than it was before and and although the opportunity that now people Get out of Harvard and go to Hollywood hoping to be television writers So there's a lot of different opportunities and and they don't have to say it's not much of a living So I think that's one of the changes Well, thank you very much