ENOUGH’S ENOUGH And Other Rules of Life...

ENOUGH’S ENOUGH And Other Rules of Life by Calvin Trillin (Ticknor & Fields: $9.95). In this anthology of his humorous column, “Uncivil Liberties,” Trillin casts an engagingly jaundiced eye at the follies and excesses of contemporary American life. He notes the incongruity of ads for luxury foreign cars that tout the vehicle’s ability to go 140 m.p.h., when the top legal speed is 65 m.p.h., and offers a Benchleyesque strategy for dealing with telephone solicitors. After hearing that Ronald and Nancy Reagan had the number of their house changed from 666 to 668 because 666 is supposedly the Devil’s number, Trillin comments, “That’s all O.K., except now where’s the Devil supposed to live?” His summation of the 1988 presidential primaries--”Any person willing to subject himself to the indignities and absurdities of running for the presidential nomination is not the sort of person we’d want in the job”--sounds even more grimly astute four years later.