This weekend Studs Terkel, a giant of American literature and a personal hero of mine, passed away at the ripe old age of 96. Over the course of his 6-decade career Studs played a lot of roles - from script writer to actor to host (radio then TV then radio again), but these titles don’t even provide elementary sense of the man. To quote from the Guardian’s obituary “to register him as “writer and broadcaster” would be like calling Louis Armstrong a “trumpeter” or the Empire State Building an “office block”. For many (including me), Studs Terkel is best described by the title given him by the writer Calvin Trillin - “America’s preeminent listener”.

Studs was an oral historian who over five decades interviewed more than 9000 people from all stations of life about life. He didn’t achieve literary fame until well into his fifties, when he released his first masterpiece Division Street, a transcript of 70 conversations he had with citizens from his adopted hometown of Chicago. Although over his career Studs interviewed many famous people - from Bertrand Russel to Bob Dylan to Marget Mead to Arnold Schwarzenegger - he spent most of his time in discussion with the Z-List, providing a venue for the voiceless and insisting on the importance of every person’s story.

And so, over the years, a 10-year-old immigrant girl found the courage to tell him “I may not live to grow up; my life was not promised to me.” Another interviewee described being black in America as “like wearing ill-fitting shoes”. A US serviceman, speaking of Hiroshima, recalled: “We were sitting on the pier, sharpening our bayonets, when Harry dropped that beautiful bomb. The greatest thing that ever happened. Anybody sitting at the pier at that time would have agreed.”

My favorite Turkel book is Working (I’m not alone in that feeling, he won a Pulitzer Prize for it). It’s full title ‘People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do’ sums up the basic premise. The book brings together all sorts of people - from Lovin’ Al the parking valet, to Dolores the waitress, to Babe Secoli the supermarket checker - and bonds them in a shared discussion of labor with its myriad irritants and salves. It was published in 1974, at the heart of what Tom Wolfe described as “the Me decade” and in that era of psychoanalysis and self-finding Studs work heroically denied the zeitgeist by insisting that the most important question to ask is not ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Who are you?’.

He was an interviewer of enormous curiosity and subtlety and an understanding (even loving) editor. In an age in which many journalists smother their subjects’ voices with their own simplifying personal commentary, the generosity and discretion shown by Terkel seem like more than virtues, they’re almost super powers. Particularly as we head toward ‘the worst economic crisis since the Depression’ I can’t help but feel the world is much, much poorer without him, but immensely richer for the body of work that he leaves behind.

One of the highlights of Studs radio career was ‘Born to Live’, a program of interviews, spoken word and musical responses to the nuclear age. Listen to it here

Here’s also a lot of good material at the site of WFMT, Studs radio station for over 40 years.

Not to mention at his site, studsterkel.org

Thank you ST.

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