The Great Divide-The Class Struggle in America, Part I- The Studs Terkel Interview Series

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Book Review

The Great Divide: Second Thoughts On The American Dream, Studs Terkel, Pantheon Books, New York, 1988

As I have done on other occasions when I am reviewing more than one work by an author I am using some of the same comments, where they are pertinent, here as I did in earlier reviews. In this series the first Studs Terkel book reviewed was that of his "The Good War": an Oral History of World War II.

Strangely, as I found out about the recent death of long time pro-working class journalist and general truth-teller "Studs" Terkel I was just beginning to read his "The Good War", about the lives and experiences of, mainly, ordinary people during World War II in America and elsewhere, for review in this space. As with other authors once I get started I tend to like to review several works that are relevant to see where their work goes. In the present case the review of The Great Divide serves a dual purpose because not only is the book a rather remarkable work of oral history but also serves as political prognosis about the emergence of a trend in the American working class in the late 1980's toward downward mobility and the abandonment of the "American Dream" as a harbinger of things that have come to pass today, twenty years on. In short, with the exception of the then already decimated family farmer who is, sadly, not a factor today and the then rampant deindustrialization of Middle America that continues unabated, many of the interviews could have been done today, twenty years later.

Once again Studs Terkel is the master interviewer but I am still put off by the fact, as I was in "The Good War", of his rather bland and inadequate old New Deal political perspective, as much as a working class partisan as he might have been. Notwithstanding that shortcoming his reportage is, as usual, centered on ordinary working people, or those who came from that milieu. These are my kind of people. This is where I come from. These are people I want to know about, especially the Midwesterners and Chicagoans who dominate this book. Being from the East, although some of their life stories, to use the current favored term, "resonate" with me other values like ardent heartland-derived patriotism, admiration for the late President Ronald Reagan, strong religious values and inordinate respect for law and order do not. Terkel, to his credit, heard the particular musical cadence of their lives and wrote with some verve on the subject, especially that old Chicago melody he has embraced that I also noticed from my reading of "The Good War" (Musically, Robert Johnson's "Sweet Home, Chicago" fits the bill here, right?).

One thing that became apparent to me immediately after reading this book, and as is also true of the majority of Terkel's interview books, is that he is not the dominant presence but is a rather light, if intensely interested, interloper in these stories. For better or worse the interviewees get to tell their stories, unchained. In this age of 24/7 media coverage with every half-baked journalist or wannabe interjecting his or her personality into somebody else's story this was, and is, rather refreshing. Of course this journalistic virtue does not mean that Studs did not have control over who got to tell their stories and who didn't to fit his preoccupations and sense of order. But, so be it.

What were Stud's preoccupations in this book? He clearly wanted to contrast the old Midwestern industrial blue collar values with the then emergence Yuppie values that were eroding that old sense of neighborly social solidarity. Moreover, he wanted to contrast various approaches to, let us call it, the need for spirituality as various religious experiments started to flourish (mainly, but not exclusively, varieties of Protestant fundamentalism) from the mega-mall churches to the lonely vigils of the Central American Sanctuary movement. Terkel gives full expression to the ambiguities of the Reagan years from the lassiz faire governmental deregulation (that we are now forced to cope with) to the various foreign policy initiatives, especially in Central America and against the Soviet Union. Also full expression to the failures of the 1960's to bring about dramatic progressive social change (a problem we still have to live down) leaving many participants bewitched and bewildered.


And what stories are being told here? Well, certainly this book is filled with interviews of the lives, struggles and fate of the rank and file blue collar workers displaced by "globalization" and the deindustrialization of America. A few stories of conflict between pro-union and anti-union forces (most dramatically in a husband and wife interview where they were on opposite sides of the class line in a long labor dispute, the husband being a "scab"). Several stories concern the quest for religious fulfillment in a world that has left more than its fair share of people isolated and bewildered by the rapid advances of technology without a commensurate sense of ownership. Many stories tell of the hard, hard life of the city, especially in "the projects", black and white. A few of the same kind of problems in the countryside, especially concerning the fate of the 'hillbillies', the people that I come from (on my father's side). All in all most stories will not seem alien to those who are struggling today to make sense of a world that they, after a quick look at their assets, surely do not own. Once again kudos to Studs for hitting the mother lode. Thanks, Brother Terkel.