A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

His seasoned wit is matched only by his appetite for good food, but Calvin Trillin is a man whose passions have always transcended the purely gustatory. The author of such critically touted books as Third Helpings (1983) and If You Can't Say Something Nice (1987), the Kansas City-born humorist, novelist and columnist also has a knack for capturing the offbeat flavor of American life. Last month Trillin contributed a portrait of Atlanta as part of TIME's coverage of the Democratic National Convention. This week Trillin's supple pen is trained on New Orleans, where the Republicans have converged for their own presidential hoopla.

For Trillin, the assignments have been pure gravy. "It's very natural for me to write about the city rather than the convention," he says. "Political reporters are only interested in what people are like in, say, a county in Iowa to the extent that it gives some indication of how they're going to vote. I'm only interested in how they voted to the extent that it gives me an indication of what the people are like."

Trillin's return to the South constitutes a double homecoming of sorts. Hired by TIME as a correspondent in 1960, he spent a year in Atlanta, then moved to New York City, where he worked in several sections before writing about national affairs. He left TIME in 1963 to join The New Yorker. In 1980 Trillin published the novel Floater, which depicts the journalistic misadventures of Fred Becker, a newsmagazine writer who "floats" from section to section. Among the book's characters are Doc Kennedy, a medicine writer who keeps coming down with the ailments that he writes about, and Woody Fenton, a managing editor who communicates mainly with phrases like "Golly" and "Jumping Jehoshaphat." Alas, no mention is made of the magazine's publisher.

"I didn't write it as an expose," Trillin says with a chuckle. "I actually liked being a floater." Naturally, the experience of working for TIME has evolved since Trillin last did it 25 years ago. "The magazine is much more open in terms of the writing now," he says. "The idea of using an outside writer like me to do a piece was unheard of back then." Still, Trillin learned that even at TIME, some things never change. Says he: "Even after all these years, writing for TIME made me feel as if I'd floated into the Essay section before moving on to Religion, or maybe Sports, the next week." But preferably not Medicine.