Volume 17, Number 2 · August 12, 1971
Hello Out There
By Roger Sale
U.S. Journal
by Calvin Trillin
Dutton, 341 pp., $6.50
Listening to America
by Bill Moyers
Harper's Magazine Press, 342 pp., $7.95
Calvin Trillin writes for The New Yorker, Bill Moyers for Harper's; both live in or near New York. Yet because Trillin is originally from Kansas City and Moyers from east Texas, when the news and pressures of the Sixties led them to think something large was happening in the country, they set out, away from the big city, toward the heartland, which had once been home. Somehow, they seemed to imagine, their considerable journalistic 'eastern' skills might be combined with their back home ways and knowledge to produce a record of what was happening. They wanted to talk to people, to see things, nothing big except in so far as it impinged on ordinary people. Presumably theirs was an impulse like Eugene McCarthy's when he came out of the committee room and said that what he'd heard was so crazy he had to go to 'the people.' These men knew what they could learn from the big city, and somehow that was not enough.
Review, 3139 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |