Family Man [Paperback]

Calvin Trillin begins his wise and charming ruminations on family by stating the sum total of his child-rearing advice: Try to get one that doesn't spit up. Otherwise, you're on your own. Suspicious of any child-rearing theories beyond Your children are either the center of your life or they're not, Trillin has clearly reveled in the role of family man. Acknowledging the special perils to the privacy of people living with a writer who occasionally remarks, I hope you're not under the impression that what you just said was off the record, Trillin deals with the subject of family in a way that is loving, honest, and wildly funny inFamily Man.

[Trillin's] timing and delivery are perfect. He doesn't ring an off-key note. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

* A short celebration of the wonderfulness of family life . . . genial, generous and unstoppably wry. Adam Woog, The Seattle Times

What you take away fromFamily Manare the depable joys of Trillin's prose-those clean, wry, perfectly constructed sentences -and his bedrock sense of what parenthood is all about. Dwight Garner, Newsday

Calvin Trillinis the author of many books includingMessages from My Father, Remembering Denny,andFamily Man. He writes a weekly column forTimeand a weekly poem forThe Nation. He lives in New York City.