When Taking Sides Mattered-Studs Terkel Potpourri

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BOOK REVIEW

My American Century, Studs Terkel, The New Press, New York, 1997

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. I have thus read and reviewed individually the six oral histories that make up this book elsewhere. In the present case My Century serves rather nicely to put in one place the best of Terkel’s interviews, or at lest the ones of continuing interest. Thus from the approximately one thousand interviews that have seen the light of day in those six books here we have about fifty to marvel at again.

As part of my reflecting what to write for this review I was struck by the range of subjects, although in some places tied together and repeated, that interested Studs. Most famously, that of the what makes people tick and get out of bed each day of “Working”; the strong sense of social solidarity that binds those who fought World War II in “The Good War”; that same sense of solidarity and grit for those who survived the Great Depression in” Hard Times”; the unstated but ever present sense of class that animates “Division Street”; the not so unstated sense of race that clouds the fight for a just society in “Race”; and, the sense of longing and lost of his fellow survivors of the Depression and World War II expressed in “Coming Of Age”. What a mix and what a masterful job of having the ear and eye to put it together.

As always, the one thing that I noticed immediately after reading this book, and as is 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. He has a point he wants to make and that is that although most “ordinary” people do not make the history books they certainly make history, if not always of their own accord or to their own liking. Again, kudos and adieu Studs.