▲ Studs Terkel (1912-2008), the iconic voice of Chicago, was a radio host who conversed with both anonymous workers and music, theater and film stars. His great talent was knowing how to listen. He was also a writer, his last book, More thoughts from a life of listening, was published in 1988.Photo taken from X
S
tuds Terkel (1912-2008), An essential voice in Chicago, where the great spectacle of the Democratic National Convention had just taken place, he had an unparalleled talent (which politicians and many journalists should imitate): listening. But listening as part of a dialogue, in which, as a journalist, the other’s word writes the story. He gave the stories of others to a mass audience, above all through his radio programs, but also in writing in his books.
As a Chicago radio host for 45 years, Terkel became an iconic voice not only in Chicago but also nationwide. The diversity of his audio interviews and oral histories that make up books about work, the Great Depression, race, and more are essential for any student of the United States. His raspy voice spoke equally with anonymous workers as with some of the most famous stars of music, theater, and film; he was a truly democratic host and author. For him, everyone’s story was equally important.
As an interviewer – unlike so many others – Terkel almost disappeared. “Talking to other people was an adventure, a voyage of discovery, a source of delightful surprises… (His interviews) reflect his conviction that if he treats his subjects with respect, listens carefully to what they have to say, and takes their concerns seriously (but never without humor), they will return his honesty,” Anthony DeCurtis comments on Terkel in introducing a collection of his interviews with musicians, And They All Sang. That collection, along with The Spectatorinterviews with film and theatre artists, as well as featuring wonderful and passionate voices, reveal something in common between all these artists: their commitment to humanisation through art.
An English theatre director tells him about the work required by Shakespeare, and how only two characters in all tragedies are the only ones who tell the truth: the king or queen, because he or she already has everything, and the jester, who has nothing. All the others have to lie, deceive and more to try to climb up to the king and also to avoid falling as low as the jester.
Or the Vienna conductor who tells how immediately after the war, starving, without heating and waste, he and his musicians had an urgent mission: play Mozart because that music was the only great thing we had left.
Leonard Bernstein, Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan, Andrés Segovia, Janice Joplin, among the musicians; Lotte Lenya, Marlon Brando, Marcel Marceau, Vittorio de Sica, Buster Keaton, among the actors and directors.
Terkel wrote perhaps the most important book in American sociology (he was not a sociologist): Working. “This book, which is about work, is by its very nature about violence; to the spirit as well as to the body… it is, above all (or beneath all) about everyday humiliation. Surviving a day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great majority of us… It is also about a search, for everyday meaning as for daily bread, for recognition as well as for wool, for wonder rather than torpor; in short, for some life rather than some Monday-to-Friday death. Perhaps immortality is also part of the search. To be remembered was the wish, explicit or implicit, of the heroes and heroines of this book.” What follows are oral histories from all kinds of workers, from miners and steelworkers to construction workers, teachers, professional athletes, editors and journalists, policemen, salesmen, flight attendants and more, a universe of everyday workers telling what they do all day and how they feel; a journey of self-narratives told to the listener’s recorder.
His latest book, More thoughts from a life of listening, It was published in 1988. It won the Pulitzer and the Presidential Medal of Arts among many other awards, which he accepted without ego.
To listen to Terkel and some of his guests: https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/
