A Rumor of Noir: Calvin Trillin around town(s)

Abstract

Rumor is customarily considered a taboo element in contemporary journalism; its use is roundly condemned in many official quarters. And yet, its actual persistence in everyday journalistic practice also suggests a need to reexamine its various functions. This essay considers the manifold uses of rumor in the journalism of The New Yorker author Calvin Trillin – specifically, his Noir essays on accidental death and murder in mid-size American towns and cities collected in Killings (1984) and American Stories (1991). Originally published as part of his ‘US Journal’ and ‘American Chronicles’ series for The New Yorker, these essays use rumor to reconstruct the private doubts and public opinions of its profiled towns – and as such, reveal Trillin’s debts to a Noir critique of the public sphere. Moreover, both as fieldwork and rhetorical tool, the marshaling of rumor plays a role both in Trillin’s own self-fashioning as a mid-American everyman and in The New Yorker’s larger claim to speak not only about such towns but also for them.