Remembering Denny
A reissue of Calvin Trillin's memoir of his relationship with a brilliant but tragic Yale classmate that is also a rumination on social change in the 1950s and 1960s\ Remembering Denny is perhaps Calvin Trillin's most inspired and powerful book: a memoir of a friendship, a work of investigative reporting, and an exploration of a country and a time that captures something essential about how America has changed since Trillin—and Denny Hansen—were graduated from Yale in 1957. Roger "Denny"...
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A reissue of Calvin Trillin's memoir of his relationship with a brilliant but tragic Yale classmate that is also a rumination on social change in the 1950s and 1960sRemembering Denny is perhaps Calvin Trillin's most inspired and powerful book: a memoir of a friendship, a work of investigative reporting, and an exploration of a country and a time that captures something essential about how America has changed since Trillin—and Denny Hansen—were graduated from Yale in 1957. Roger "Denny" Hansen had seemed then a college hero for the ages: a charmer with a dazzling smile, the subject of a feature in Life magazine, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a varsity swimmer, a Rhodes scholar...perhaps a future president, as his friends only half-joked. But after early jobs in government and journalism, Hansen's life increasingly took a downward turn and he gradually lost touch with family and old friends before eventually committing suicide—an obscure, embittered, pain-racked professor—in 1991. In contemplating his friend's life, Calvin Trillin considers questions both large and small—what part does the pressure of high expectations place on even the most gifted, how difficult might it have been to be a closeted homosexual in the unyielding world of the 1960s Foreign Service, how much responsibility does the individual bear for all that happens in his life—in a book that is also a meditation on our country's evolving sense of itself. Publishers Weekly This collection was on PW 's bestseller list for seven weeks. (Apr.)
\ From the Publisher"Fascinating . . . A fine meditation on one life's aborted promise, the crippling burden of anticipated success, and the mysteries of the human heart." —Kirkus Reviews\ \ \ \ \ Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly\ This collection was on PW 's bestseller list for seven weeks. (Apr.)\ \ \ Library JournalIn 1957 Denny Hansen had it all--a "dazzling'' smile, a new Yale degree, an appointment as a Rhodes scholar, friends who regarded him practically as an icon, and a boundless future in an era when the sky seemed the limit for bright graduates. In 1991 he became a modern Richard Cory, taking his own life. Trillin, his Yale classmate, tries to determine what went so terribly wrong. However, in his search, we necessarily see so much more of the troubled later years than of the golden years that we ultimately lose sight of the magnitude of the change in Hansen. Expect demand where Trillin's works are popular; also, the public is always morbidly interested in fallen stars. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/92.-- Jim Burns, Ottumwa, Ia.\ \ \ \ \ Michael DorrisEloquent, heartfelt…an investigation worthy of Mr. Trillin's intelligence and acuity….the pages just almost turn themselves. \ —The New York Times Book Review\ \
