Parking's a bitch

So Calvin Trillin has gotten a good amount of press lately for About Alice, his memoir about his late wife. I read the piece it was based on in the New Yorker last spring, and it broke my heart. But in the kind of way that puts in back together again.

When I got to reading Trillin this week, though, I chose a slightly older piece, Tepper Isn't Going Out. It was on my reading list, probably from early 2003, although I can't for the life of me recall what led me to put it on there. Which is strange because it's not like me to not remember extraneous details.

And yet, even though it wasn't About Alice, it was "...for Alice. Actually I wrote everything for Alice." (I literally swooned when I read that.)

Trillin's fiction is a lot like his non-fiction, humorous, whimsical, slightly self-deprecating. Murray Tepper is a sort of Everyman, who just happens to be a bit obsessed with parking. And now that he keeps his car in a garage, he gets his parking on by finding and staying in legal spots, usually reading the paper and shooing away people who are expecting him to leave any minute and open up the space. Harmless, until he starts to get press, draws a legion of fans, and draws the ire of Mayor Ducavelli, who is a pretty hilarious mildly-fascist Rudy Giuliani (at least, the pre-9/11 Giuliani known best for marital troubles and freaking out about controversial artwork).

It's not a very challenging read, but it's adorable. I had a smile on my face pretty much the whole time. And sometimes, that's all you need from a book.