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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 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 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.
Remembering Denny is perhaps Calvin Trillin's most inspired and powerful 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 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.
232 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1993
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351 people want to read
About the author
Calvin Trillin
87 books278 followersCalvin (Bud) Marshall Trillin is an American journalist, humorist, and novelist. He is best known for his humorous writings about food and eating, but he has also written much serious journalism, comic verse, and several books of fiction.
Trillin attended public schools in Kansas City and went on to Yale University, where he served as chairman of the Yale Daily News and became a member of Scroll and Key before graduating in 1957; he later served as a trustee of the university. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he worked as a reporter for Time magazine before joining the staff of The New Yorker in 1963. His reporting for The New Yorker on the racial integration of the University of Georgia was published in his first book, An Education in Georgia. He wrote the magazine's "U.S. Journal" series from 1967 to 1982, covering local events both serious and quirky throughout the United States.
Trillin attended public schools in Kansas City and went on to Yale University, where he served as chairman of the Yale Daily News and became a member of Scroll and Key before graduating in 1957; he later served as a trustee of the university. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he worked as a reporter for Time magazine before joining the staff of The New Yorker in 1963. His reporting for The New Yorker on the racial integration of the University of Georgia was published in his first book, An Education in Georgia. He wrote the magazine's "U.S. Journal" series from 1967 to 1982, covering local events both serious and quirky throughout the United States.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
December 21, 2018
One of the best books of its kind. Shocked by the suicide of a Yale classmate he thought of as a demi-god, Trillin set out to investigate the reasons why Roger Hansen, who he knew as Denny, killed himself at age 55. He interviewed all the people who had known Hansen at his California High School, at Yale, at Oxford where Hansen spent 2 fairly miserable years as a Rhodes Scholar, at the Woodrow Wilson School, and finally at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies where Hansen was teaching when he committed suicide. In his suicide note, Hansen identified his bad back and excruciating physical pain as the sole cause of his action. Of course, things are a lot more complex than that, and Trillin uncovers many surprising truths about his classmate. Hansen spent years in analysis, trying to deal with anger issues, his inability to jump into the fray and take an active role in policy making, and above all, his homosexuality, which Trillin had never even suspected. Additionally, Hansen was estranged from his family. Trillin realizes that the boy of unlimited potential he and his cohort saw at Yale bore no resemblance to the sour and furtive soul Hansen had turned into in middle age. He tries to see Hansen's suicide from every angle, and to establish whether being seen too young as presidential material actually undermined Hansen's self-confidence and proved too great a burden. In an effort to find out whether Hansen's tragic life fitted any kind of pattern, Trillin did an enormous amount of research through surveys chronicling the path of Yale graduates and Rhodes Scholars. As a result his book throws a great deal of light on the atmosphere and culture of Ivy League schools in the fifties, while never losing track of the specifics of Hansen's personal ordeal. Although the writing is quite intricate and some sentences contain far too much information, this book is as moving as it is intellectually thorough. Trillin's humbling conclusion is something every one of us should always bear in mind: you never truly get to know anyone.
April 15, 2020
Parts of this were interesting, but one has to see this volume as being more about the author, Trillin, and the others than it is about Denny. It is really about seeing Denny's life from a sympathetic heterosexual point of view. Trillin is not bigoted, but somehow seems to miss how devastating being gay would have been (and continues to be in some circles). He talks about this a bit towards the end, but when he talks about Denny being estranged from his family possible reasons for this are not mentioned. Sometimes families tell their gay son to "go away", even when their son was previously perceived as the “golden boy”. In the 1950's of course everything would have been more of a secret and therefore even more unthinkable. How can a person imagine living in the world when it is unthinkable, unimaginable, to be in the world as yourself? Somehow, Trillin does not seem to respect the deep tangled strangling roots of internalized homophobia. For me, considering Denny's depression is almost a chicken and egg question. Which came first, depression or self-hatred?
October 19, 2017
This book first came out shortly before I started college, prompting several people to gift me copies: "Hey! You're going to Yale! You'll find this interesting!" In fact, I found it was written by an older journalist ruminating on why his golden-boy friend from the stuffy, elite, all-male Yale of the 1950s had a less-than-stellar career and committed suicide in his late 50s. None of it seemed relevant to an 18 year old girl in the 1990s, eager to start out into the world and high on the opportunities that the exuberant, co-ed, wonderfully alive Yale of the mid-1990s had to offer. I scratched my head about the people who had given me the book and laid it aside.
But now I'm 40 and have lost a few college friends, too, while others of us wonder what we've made of our lives. I thought the book might speak to me more.
Nope. It's irritatingly without form or insight, too particular and small in its musings to speak universally, and maddeningly self-absorbed, the product of a man who benefitted from the incredible access to power and privilege afforded by the Yale of midcentury, who nevertheless assesses his cohort as having led unimpressive, stunted lives. A first job as London correspondent for TIME? Positions in the State Department at age 25? Best-selling scholarship and endowed chairs at the top schools of international affairs? And all of this falls short because the only measure of success was the White House?
Finished the book no more enlightened about the nature of mid-life crisis and all the more irritated with the self-pitying, navel-gazing elite.
But now I'm 40 and have lost a few college friends, too, while others of us wonder what we've made of our lives. I thought the book might speak to me more.
Nope. It's irritatingly without form or insight, too particular and small in its musings to speak universally, and maddeningly self-absorbed, the product of a man who benefitted from the incredible access to power and privilege afforded by the Yale of midcentury, who nevertheless assesses his cohort as having led unimpressive, stunted lives. A first job as London correspondent for TIME? Positions in the State Department at age 25? Best-selling scholarship and endowed chairs at the top schools of international affairs? And all of this falls short because the only measure of success was the White House?
Finished the book no more enlightened about the nature of mid-life crisis and all the more irritated with the self-pitying, navel-gazing elite.
June 4, 2007
Following the death by suicide of an old college friend, Calvin Trillin 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 The Great Gatsby 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.
June 3, 2018
I'm down the New Yorker Writers rabbit hole again. I love Calvin Trillin, though this isn't my favorite. Maybe he's just too close to the subject, too implicated in the conclusions, maybe there's no clear ground for a reporter to walk though this particular weed farm. Despite its not being my favorite, it's still an interesting/helpful view of the 1950s, especially as it relates to homosexuality.
September 5, 2012
An account of a Yale classmate and golden boy whose life takes a surprising downward turn. Trillin is thoughtful and sensitive in exploring what exactly happened on the road to success.
October 23, 2023
I’ve read Mr. Trillin’s New Yorker articles and poetry a number of times, as well as several of his books, all witty and droll, and also went to see him at a book signing a number of years ago. So, if you’ve picked up this book expecting an understated wry reflection on contemporary society, you may be disappointed. Indeed, it is a heartbreaking memoir of a 1950’s Yale classmate of Mr. Trillin’s, Roger “Denny” Hansen, a handsome, charismatic, intelligent young man who everyone thought was eventually destined for the Presidency, but who died at age 55 by suicide. What few people knew was that, underneath his persona, Denny had longstanding feelings that he didn’t fit in at Yale, and had a number of depressive episodes.
Denny was from Redwood City, a small town in California and both he and society had very high expectations of him when he graduated from High School. Indeed, “the uncomplicated society (Sequoia high School graduates) had been prepared for had changed so much that where they fit into it had turned out to be painted in those complicated shades of gray.” Another issue is, as Mr. Trillin puts it:
“…the problem facing people who breeze through high school and college the way Denny did is that they get no training in losing, so the first defeat can be devastating.”
While Denny supposedly successfully negotiated a number of psychological, sports and academic roadblocks, it seems that his time at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar was a difficult turning point. “Life” magazine had done a profile on him some time previously, and he was followed up on when at Oxford, and was described as not happy there, as it put him up against a number of very bright contemporaries, while he himself struggled. Indeed, he feared that his true, insecure nature would be embarrassingly revealed in that environment, and he described himself many times as a poser and a fake.
After graduation, Denny attempted to enter the Foreign Service but was turned down, a blow early in his career. He worked for the National Planning Association and studied international economics, writing a seminal book, “The Politics of Mexican Development.” He subsequently worked for the NSC during the Carter administration but reportedly had difficulty putting his very good ideas down on paper, and would argue with his superiors and was generally described as difficult to get along with. A subsequent book was never published. At age 41, he obtained a professorship at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, but his literary output was basically nil, not having completed his third book before his death.
In his personal life, Denny never married, although he did have a long time platonic relationship with a colleague, Carol Austin. Nonethless, one of his internal conflicts was a fear that he would become homosexual; he did have several gay friends, and indeed his suicide was at the home of a gay friend.
The book leapfrogs among descriptions of the academic climate of the 1950’s, changing expectations, Denny’s character and internal demons, and Messrs. Trillin and Hansen’s relationship; and a gathering of Denny’s friends and acquaintances after his funeral, in which most expressed bemusement and confusion about his suicide and the difficulty all of them really knowing him. He had become more irritable and socially isolated in the years prior to his death, making such knowledge virtually impossible.
At the end of the book is a wonderful essay by the screenwriter and critic (and longtime friend of Mr. Trillin) John Gregory Dunne. In it Mr. Dunne describes not only Denny Hansen but also Mr. Trillin himself, his development, personality and writing style, in the context of the changing world that he and Denny were subjected to during and after their days at Yale. Well told on several fronts, and deepened my appreciation of the book itself.
Mr. Trillin’s final chapter includes a quote from Cyril Connolly, a contemporary British writer and critic: “Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.” I cannot imagine a more apropos description of the tragedy that was Mr. Hansen. Five stars and strongly recommended.
Denny was from Redwood City, a small town in California and both he and society had very high expectations of him when he graduated from High School. Indeed, “the uncomplicated society (Sequoia high School graduates) had been prepared for had changed so much that where they fit into it had turned out to be painted in those complicated shades of gray.” Another issue is, as Mr. Trillin puts it:
“…the problem facing people who breeze through high school and college the way Denny did is that they get no training in losing, so the first defeat can be devastating.”
While Denny supposedly successfully negotiated a number of psychological, sports and academic roadblocks, it seems that his time at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar was a difficult turning point. “Life” magazine had done a profile on him some time previously, and he was followed up on when at Oxford, and was described as not happy there, as it put him up against a number of very bright contemporaries, while he himself struggled. Indeed, he feared that his true, insecure nature would be embarrassingly revealed in that environment, and he described himself many times as a poser and a fake.
After graduation, Denny attempted to enter the Foreign Service but was turned down, a blow early in his career. He worked for the National Planning Association and studied international economics, writing a seminal book, “The Politics of Mexican Development.” He subsequently worked for the NSC during the Carter administration but reportedly had difficulty putting his very good ideas down on paper, and would argue with his superiors and was generally described as difficult to get along with. A subsequent book was never published. At age 41, he obtained a professorship at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, but his literary output was basically nil, not having completed his third book before his death.
In his personal life, Denny never married, although he did have a long time platonic relationship with a colleague, Carol Austin. Nonethless, one of his internal conflicts was a fear that he would become homosexual; he did have several gay friends, and indeed his suicide was at the home of a gay friend.
The book leapfrogs among descriptions of the academic climate of the 1950’s, changing expectations, Denny’s character and internal demons, and Messrs. Trillin and Hansen’s relationship; and a gathering of Denny’s friends and acquaintances after his funeral, in which most expressed bemusement and confusion about his suicide and the difficulty all of them really knowing him. He had become more irritable and socially isolated in the years prior to his death, making such knowledge virtually impossible.
At the end of the book is a wonderful essay by the screenwriter and critic (and longtime friend of Mr. Trillin) John Gregory Dunne. In it Mr. Dunne describes not only Denny Hansen but also Mr. Trillin himself, his development, personality and writing style, in the context of the changing world that he and Denny were subjected to during and after their days at Yale. Well told on several fronts, and deepened my appreciation of the book itself.
Mr. Trillin’s final chapter includes a quote from Cyril Connolly, a contemporary British writer and critic: “Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.” I cannot imagine a more apropos description of the tragedy that was Mr. Hansen. Five stars and strongly recommended.
September 18, 2017
Every generation struggles with the cultural shifts brought on by younger generations. I grew up during the sixties and seventies and heard endless complaints about how our age group didn't measure up compared to the nineteen-forties-and-fifties' crowds. Speaking now as a man who is close to sixty years old, I witness many (if not most) around my age now complaining about younger generations. As always, at its core, the grumbling is really about losing personal relevance in an ever-changing world. The unexpected suicide of a friend in 1991 seemed to push Mr. Trillin into analyzing Denny's as well as his own life. The short book is an assessment of the nineteen-fifties' mindset at prestigious Ivy League schools, especially Yale. It is a higher-learning environment which attracts the best and the brightest. Mr. Trillin's white, male, adolescent classmates viewed the future as their oyster. It is rarefied air that most including myself will never experience. In Trillin's world, bumping into Rhodes Scholars is a common event. I'd, however, have a better chance of crossing paths with Bigfoot.
'Remembering Denny' is not a broad brush view of America but focused on people who became or were expected to become movers-n-shakers in business, politics, and academia. They aren't worried about paying their rent or putting food on the table. Their angst is about not measuring up compared to peers. For many it becomes a lifelong burden. Mr. Trillin’s work is part introspection, part investigation, and devoid of a climax or real answers. His understated wit is found throughout the book. If you are not paying close attention, you might miss some of his funny remarks. Readers sure won't mistake it for vaudeville material. It is a gentle book that caused me to mull over the topics he covered. The author addresses such things as the expectations of success, sexual orientation, the Rhodes Scholar experience, unspoken insecurities, cliques, anti-Semitism, depression, and sexism. Mr. Trillin does a fine job showing that wealth and prestige come with their own burdens that should not be casually dismissed. Henry David Thoreau was right. The mass of men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation. It's a melancholy work of real value.
'Remembering Denny' is not a broad brush view of America but focused on people who became or were expected to become movers-n-shakers in business, politics, and academia. They aren't worried about paying their rent or putting food on the table. Their angst is about not measuring up compared to peers. For many it becomes a lifelong burden. Mr. Trillin’s work is part introspection, part investigation, and devoid of a climax or real answers. His understated wit is found throughout the book. If you are not paying close attention, you might miss some of his funny remarks. Readers sure won't mistake it for vaudeville material. It is a gentle book that caused me to mull over the topics he covered. The author addresses such things as the expectations of success, sexual orientation, the Rhodes Scholar experience, unspoken insecurities, cliques, anti-Semitism, depression, and sexism. Mr. Trillin does a fine job showing that wealth and prestige come with their own burdens that should not be casually dismissed. Henry David Thoreau was right. The mass of men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation. It's a melancholy work of real value.
November 2, 2014
In this very personal book, Calvin Trilling conducts a type of psychological autopsy on a former college friend whose suicide had been a shocking conclusion to a life once deemed full of promise. Denny Hansen had been a Big Man on Campus, a Golden Boy of the Yale graduating class, a Rhodes scholar...and then... his life had seemed to fizzle a bit. None of his jobs had lived up to the brilliant potential everybody had predicted for him. Health problems led to a constant low-grade depression. And the boy everybody wanted to be friends with, had become a morose colleague the other professors at his institution had avoided. It turned out Denny had also had a difficult time accepting his homosexuality.
Calvin Trilling interviews various friends and colleagues of Denny's, trying to identify the point where it all went wrong. Was it when he took up his Rhodes scholarship and studied in Oxford, England, which in the 1950s was still an exotic place for Californians? Was it when he weaved back and forth between academic and government positions? Or did the trouble originate much earlier, during his childhood? There are some musings on the weight of the expectations that accompanied Denny when he left Yale, about the all-white, all-male establishment of the 1950s, about the various subcultures at Yale.
The book starts of with a sense of shock as Calvin Trilling hears the news of Denny's death and then gradually moves to sadness as he realizes how lonely Denny was, despite his early brilliance. Everybody who has ever been bewildered by the suicide of a friend or acquaintance who seemed to have so much to live for, will be able to empathize with the book, and that despite the fact that Danny Hansen himself, is a complete unknown to us.
Calvin Trilling interviews various friends and colleagues of Denny's, trying to identify the point where it all went wrong. Was it when he took up his Rhodes scholarship and studied in Oxford, England, which in the 1950s was still an exotic place for Californians? Was it when he weaved back and forth between academic and government positions? Or did the trouble originate much earlier, during his childhood? There are some musings on the weight of the expectations that accompanied Denny when he left Yale, about the all-white, all-male establishment of the 1950s, about the various subcultures at Yale.
The book starts of with a sense of shock as Calvin Trilling hears the news of Denny's death and then gradually moves to sadness as he realizes how lonely Denny was, despite his early brilliance. Everybody who has ever been bewildered by the suicide of a friend or acquaintance who seemed to have so much to live for, will be able to empathize with the book, and that despite the fact that Danny Hansen himself, is a complete unknown to us.
March 11, 2015
Calvin Trillin memorialized his Yale school friend Roger D Hansen who rose from humble, middle class beginnings to academic and government stardom .
He was an 'all-purpose boy hero'. He had gone on to become a Rhodes Scholar,and a brilliant international economist specializing on North-South development problems .He was one of the first economists writing about a need to shift from the old top-down development aid programs to a 'basic needs'(GPI ) approach to solving the Third World underdevelopment trap. He worked briefly in the Carter Administration and then returned to the University as a popular and renowned professor on International Relations theory and organization. There were problems that persisted just below the surface of his life that Professor Hansen was never adequately able to resolve. He ended his life in suicide at a friend's house in Rehobeth Beach , Delaware 1991.
The book reminded me of the 'Big Chill'. We are a nostalgic generation. We talk a lot about our past , our 'glory days' when we were young and full of promise in growing up with Rock&Roll. We lived in one of the most prosperous economic times in America. In the late 50's-60's , America enjoyed its narrowest gap in wealth , social opportunity and position between the very rich and the poor and middle class. Many more Americans felt good about our expanding opportunities to attend college, get a good job, be anything we wanted to be. What are we doing and where are we going now?
He was an 'all-purpose boy hero'. He had gone on to become a Rhodes Scholar,and a brilliant international economist specializing on North-South development problems .He was one of the first economists writing about a need to shift from the old top-down development aid programs to a 'basic needs'(GPI ) approach to solving the Third World underdevelopment trap. He worked briefly in the Carter Administration and then returned to the University as a popular and renowned professor on International Relations theory and organization. There were problems that persisted just below the surface of his life that Professor Hansen was never adequately able to resolve. He ended his life in suicide at a friend's house in Rehobeth Beach , Delaware 1991.
The book reminded me of the 'Big Chill'. We are a nostalgic generation. We talk a lot about our past , our 'glory days' when we were young and full of promise in growing up with Rock&Roll. We lived in one of the most prosperous economic times in America. In the late 50's-60's , America enjoyed its narrowest gap in wealth , social opportunity and position between the very rich and the poor and middle class. Many more Americans felt good about our expanding opportunities to attend college, get a good job, be anything we wanted to be. What are we doing and where are we going now?
February 27, 2019
I will read anything by Calvin Trillin! He could make a wallpapering how-to interesting and funny! This book was a quick but great read with insights into the fifties mentality - golden boys (like my father was) and the inner workings of Washington, D.C. - all of which I was fascinated by.
May 16, 2014
I enjoyed Calvin Trillin's quest to find out what ever became of his Yale classmate, Denny. Trillin was shocked to learn Denny had committed suicide over the New Year holiday in 1990-91. Trillin attended the memorial service and talked to several fellow classmates and others who had known Denny. This sparked a continuing journey to find answers.
Denny was a young man who had held such promise: he was the quintessential "all American hero" of the mid-1950s. Was that mantle too much to bear?
I enjoyed the questions that Trillin posed and the fact that he doesn't arrive at any answers, only possibilities. I'm working on a writing project with similar themes--trying to uncover the life of someone who has died, a life that in many ways was mysterious and leaves many questions. Trillin's book serves as a good model.
Trillin is best known as a journalist and political commentator. At times, this book gets a little too political and dry for my taste. Denny had worked teaching international relations, and sometimes the details of this Washington insider's life went over my head. It's a slim volume, just over 200 pages, but it took me nearly a month to finish because it wasn't one of those books that I just "had to" read every day. Still, it's a good example of a writer trying to get some answers to a real-life mystery.
Denny was a young man who had held such promise: he was the quintessential "all American hero" of the mid-1950s. Was that mantle too much to bear?
I enjoyed the questions that Trillin posed and the fact that he doesn't arrive at any answers, only possibilities. I'm working on a writing project with similar themes--trying to uncover the life of someone who has died, a life that in many ways was mysterious and leaves many questions. Trillin's book serves as a good model.
Trillin is best known as a journalist and political commentator. At times, this book gets a little too political and dry for my taste. Denny had worked teaching international relations, and sometimes the details of this Washington insider's life went over my head. It's a slim volume, just over 200 pages, but it took me nearly a month to finish because it wasn't one of those books that I just "had to" read every day. Still, it's a good example of a writer trying to get some answers to a real-life mystery.
April 10, 2018
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.
December 22, 2024
I've read a good portion of Calvin Trillin's prolific output, and for my money this is his finest work. Although best known as a light humorist, he is also an excellent serious journalist with a knack for crafting elegant prose that can capture an entire social world with a few deft strokes.
Here he blends biography and personal memoir with penetrating cultural history and social analysis, through a story that charts the unhappy fate of an exceptionally gifted college friend. The story unfolds as a true-life mystery with tragic overtones. As Trillin investigates what became of his friend, he paints a vivid portrait of Ivy League academic culture and the social milieu of America in the 1950s. More broadly still, he explores the fragility of human happiness, with the Denny case serving as a window into the many, many things we take for granted so long as our lives are running more or less smoothly. Although the story is multi-faceted, the burden of high expectations and unfulfilled promise loom very large in Trillin's analysis. This is an eloquent, perceptive, and deeply moving book.
Here he blends biography and personal memoir with penetrating cultural history and social analysis, through a story that charts the unhappy fate of an exceptionally gifted college friend. The story unfolds as a true-life mystery with tragic overtones. As Trillin investigates what became of his friend, he paints a vivid portrait of Ivy League academic culture and the social milieu of America in the 1950s. More broadly still, he explores the fragility of human happiness, with the Denny case serving as a window into the many, many things we take for granted so long as our lives are running more or less smoothly. Although the story is multi-faceted, the burden of high expectations and unfulfilled promise loom very large in Trillin's analysis. This is an eloquent, perceptive, and deeply moving book.
July 1, 2013
Ostensibly about Trillin’s college friend, Roger "Denny" Hansen, and the trajectory of Denny’s life from a sort of golden boy at Yale in th fifties to his suicide over three decades later. However, Trillin is often a very understated and subtle writer, and to me the book seemed to be a sort of self-examination of Trillin’s own youth from the vantage of middle age.
How and why did guys like Trillin and Hansen end up at Yale in the 50s from places so far away geographically and culturally? What did it mean to be at Yale at that precise moment--before women were allowed to attend and at the outset of the civil rights movement before it had reached critical mass? What were the assumptions and values necessary to think of Denny as a golden boy? Why did males and females view him so differently? How did Trillin and so many people from Yale not know that Denny was gay until after he had died?
So, it is a book about Denny's trajectory, but in examining these and other questions becomes one about Trillin's as well.
How and why did guys like Trillin and Hansen end up at Yale in the 50s from places so far away geographically and culturally? What did it mean to be at Yale at that precise moment--before women were allowed to attend and at the outset of the civil rights movement before it had reached critical mass? What were the assumptions and values necessary to think of Denny as a golden boy? Why did males and females view him so differently? How did Trillin and so many people from Yale not know that Denny was gay until after he had died?
So, it is a book about Denny's trajectory, but in examining these and other questions becomes one about Trillin's as well.
April 28, 2019
This was such a troubling read. I could almost physically feel Trillin's frustration as he tried to get to the bottom of the questions surrounding his friend Danny's death. Or maybe it was my own I was feeling; I've lost 2 college friends the same way myself. The author did as good a job as anyone could with questions like these, and I appreciate his honesty in admitting that someone you've known for ages and care very much about can prove to be finally unknowable. He never sinks to the level of trying to categorize or explain Denny, and he stays far, far away from the kind of shoot-from-the-hip psychoanalysis that would make matters far blurrier than they already are. He also gives a wonderful glimpse into the very odd times they lived in together; they became adults just as all the rules everyone followed were about to change completely. I've never had the chance to see that era from this angle and it made the whole picture so much clearer for me. I highly recommend this book.
October 10, 2017
Although Calvin Trillin is one of my favorite nonfiction writers, I slow-walked through this book. It's about his friendship with Denny, who he met at Yale in the 50s. The memoir rambles around a bit, describing Trillin's years at Yale and his friendship with Denny. But it wasn't until the last third of the book that the story came alive for me. It's not a SPOILER to reveal that Denny's life ended early, in his 50s, and that he was a closeted gay for most of his life. What I found most interesting was how much has changed in my lifetime for gay people. Being gay in America in the 50s/60s, and earlier for sure, was a burden (not the best word) that I never fully appreciated. Being able to come out in the 90s/aughts/20teens is an entirely different experience for many. Basically, pre-Stonewall vs. post-Stonewall. Let's hope that the effing moron in the WH doesn't set us back 50 years.
December 27, 2010
I recommend this book. Well written and engaging, it tells the rather sad story of Denny Hanson, a "golden boy" of the 1950s who did not quite live up to the very high expectations set for him. My criticism of the book amounts to quibbles. Trillin interviews plenty of people who share what they think happened to Denny, but the author never tells the reader his own opinion. After doing so much research on Denny, I think Trillin ought to have explained why he kept his own opinion to himself. Trillin puts Denny just halfway on the couch with an incomplete psychological study that barely skims the surface of the subject's childhood. And I think he flubs it describing an "orthodox Freudian" in the context of Denny's issues.
October 10, 2014
Sometimes we look back on a person's failure to fulfill his promise and ask, "What Happened?" Essayist Calvin Trillin asked that question about a classmate whose life started out promising (Life Magazine covered his graduation from Yale), then curdled into ennui, then ended in suicide.
Even finishing the book, I now know how Denny lived, and how he died--but the why still eludes me. But suicides are rarely otherwise.
Excellent, searching and poignant.
Even finishing the book, I now know how Denny lived, and how he died--but the why still eludes me. But suicides are rarely otherwise.
Excellent, searching and poignant.
June 23, 2017
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.
February 13, 2009
If your father or grandfather is a white male born in America in the late 20's or early 30's, this story is one you should read. Beautifully written, it asks really important questions and helped me to understand the dichotomy of being born to rule the world and having the whole concept fall apart in the 60's and 70's. Awesome.
July 9, 2018
A student star commits suicide. Why? Bud Trillin, who thought he knew Denny from their days together in college, explores the apparent mystery. A female friend of mine says this book shows how many men avoid intimacy through the regular use of easy banter. Instead of discussing what really matters to them, they trade quips and tell each other jokes.
June 25, 2007
Interesting picture of a time and a place in America... Esp. interesting if you went to Princeton, as Trillin did. There are some fun things he talks about like how back in the day they used to describe people with the slang word, "shoe." Like, he's a shoe guy.
June 15, 2010
I usually like Calvin Trilling, and this was good, but could have used some editing (I thought). The idea of what expectations do to people as they grow & mature was interesting...those notions we have of a promising youngster may not jibe with the people they become.
May 25, 2014
Bittersweet memoir of Trillin's college friend and "golden boy" who did not live up to the promise everyone expected of him. Through his reminiscences, Trillin reveals his own maturation from the conformist '50s through the early '90s. The story is told with gentle humor and affection.
August 9, 2015
This is one of the books that will always stay with me. This book may claim that no one ever knew the real person Roger D. Hansen was, but I definitely felt a deep connection to him after reading this book. There was nothing and everything special about him. Heart-wrenching.
June 17, 2018
A really boring book for the most part that focuses a ridiculous amount on what could have been rather than what was. Barely any exploration of his sexuality which was clearly a large part of his life, perhaps just one that the author is uncomfortable with or has no idea how to approach.
September 9, 2007
Interesting perspectives on picking through another's life by someone who has, as he has avowed, been doing it for a living for decades.
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November 19, 2007Finally got this through bookmooch, and got a few chapters in. But then did a spring clean and the book went missing. Hopefully it will turn up again and I can finish.
October 19, 2008
This is an amazing book.
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