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trin's review
4.0
Following the death by suicide of an old college friend, [a: Calvin Trillin|55201|Calvin Trillin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1252960739p2/55201.jpg] tells the story of Denny's life and analyzes the things that may have led him to end it. A Yale golden boy whose graduation was covered by Life magazine, Denny seemed to have limitless promise—his friends used to joke constantly (but semi-seriously) about him one day becoming president—but after two years at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and following a rejection from the Foreign Service, his career never seemed to reach the heights others had anticipated. In talking with Denny's post-college friends, Trillin is also surprised to discover that Denny's personal life was troubled; he struggled with his homosexuality—something Trillin himself never knew about—and suffered deep bouts of depression. Trillin's exploration of this singular, personal tragedy raises a lot of interesting questions about youthful pressures and expectations, about 1950s America, and about how destructive something like the country's negative attitude toward anything but perfectly conforming straightness can be. This book almost seems like what [b: The Great Gatsby|4671|The Great Gatsby|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1490528560s/4671.jpg|245494] would have been if it was a) a true story, b) set three decades later, and c) starred Tom Buchanan—a much more sympathetic Tom Buchanan—as the main character. A truly fascinating read.
babsellen's review against another edition
3.0
Like the author, I never got a sense of who Denny truly was. I think that was the point but somehow the book never seemed to go beyond scratching the surface. Interesting musings about coming of age in the fifties as a privileged white male on the cusp of enormous societal changes. I wondered sometimes throughout the reading that if I were Denny, how would I feel about a one-time peripheral friend writing an entire book about me full of speculation about my suicide.
anniey's review against another edition
dark
reflective
1.0
well this felt exploitative as hell. and so repetitive it could’ve been an essay.
read for class
read for class
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
clambook's review
4.0
Written in 1993, it’s a consideration of the apparently failed promise of Trillin’s Yale classmate, Denny Hansen, class of 1957. It’s also a reflection – Trillin’s and others in Hansen’s orbit – of the burden of promise, of being among the elite of the elite (Hansen was also a Rhodes Scholar). From Nancy Mitchell, a student of Hansen’s: “The way I see promise is that you have a knapsack. And all the time you’re growing up they keep stuffing promise into the knapsack. Pretty soon it’s just too heavy to carry. You have to unpack.”
It’s also an examination of how what’s expected of someone, by others and him/herself, has changed as the generations have changed. Trillin does a thorough job of reporting, with extensive verbatim quotes (I wonder how he does that) and no little compassion for Denny’s secret torments, not the least of which was his confused sexuality. Near the end, he thinks about whether he, Trillin, had fulfilled his own promise:
“And me? Had I become my father? He raised me to not become him of course but it occurred to me that a reporter could do worse than aspire to a standard of behavior reflected in my father’s approach to being a grocer — give good weight, refuse to buckle under to pressure from the chain stores, Great with contempt the wartime temptation to get rich by cutting a few corners.”
Well said.
It’s also an examination of how what’s expected of someone, by others and him/herself, has changed as the generations have changed. Trillin does a thorough job of reporting, with extensive verbatim quotes (I wonder how he does that) and no little compassion for Denny’s secret torments, not the least of which was his confused sexuality. Near the end, he thinks about whether he, Trillin, had fulfilled his own promise:
“And me? Had I become my father? He raised me to not become him of course but it occurred to me that a reporter could do worse than aspire to a standard of behavior reflected in my father’s approach to being a grocer — give good weight, refuse to buckle under to pressure from the chain stores, Great with contempt the wartime temptation to get rich by cutting a few corners.”
Well said.