Calvin Trillin's Remembering Denny reminded me, when I got to the last page, of Antonioni's The Passenger. Both have a similar quote along the lines of, "You didn't know him at all." Trillin traces the life of a Yale classmate in the 1950s who was a "golden boy" – winning smile, swimming star in high school, Rhodes Scholar, author on foreign relations – but who took his life in middle age. How much can we really know about people? Despite some digging and his clear-eyed intellect, Trillin approaches but does not fully explicate the personality and disappointments of Roger Hansen, known at Yale as Denny. On a side note, it is always a pleasure as a reader to be in the hands of a skilled writer, and Trillin's prose is sharp and crystalline.
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