Studs Terkel: The voice of us all

Studs Terkel‘s books were about America. His method — to tape record interviews with average people (and sometimes famous ones) and then present their stories in their own words, unvarnished — produced what may be the richest and most significant oral history of the last century that anyone will use. His books — “Hard Times,” “Working,” “Hope Dies Last,” among them — made the trials and travails of the people affected by history into history, added flesh to the famous-person narratives we usually receive.

He died today, according to The New York Times, which offered a fine obituary:

In his oral histories, which he called guerrilla journalism, Studs Terkel relied on his enthusiastic but gentle interviewing style to elicit, in rich detail, the experiences and thoughts of ordinary Americans. “Division Street: America” (1966), his first best-seller and the first in a triptych of tape-recorded works, explored the urban conflicts of the 1960s. Its success led to “Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression”(1970) and “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do”(1974). “ ‘The Good War’: An Oral History of World War II,” won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.

In “Talking to Myself,” Mr. Terkel turned the microphone on himself to produce an engaging memoir, and more recently, in “Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession” (1992) and “Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It”(1995)’ he reached for his ever-present tape recorder for interviews on race relations in the United States and the experience of growing old.

Although detractors derided him as a sentimental populist whose views were simplistic and occasionally maudlin, Mr. Terkel was widely credited with transforming oral history into a popular literary form. In 1985 a reviewer for The Financial Times of London characterized Mr. Terkel’s books as “completely free of sociological claptrap, armchair revisionism and academic moralizing.”

The Times goes on to explain his particular gifts:

The elfin, amiable Mr. Terkel was a gifted and seemingly tireless interviewer who elicited provocative insights and colorful, detailed personal histories from a broad mix of people. “The thing I’m able to do, I guess, is break down walls,” he once told an interviewer. “If they think you’re listening, they’ll talk. It’s more of a conversation than an interview.”

Mr. Terkel’s succeeded as an interviewer in part because he believed most people had something to say worth hearing. “The average American has an indigenous intelligence, a native wit,” he said. “It’s only a question of piquing that intelligence.

In “American Dreams: Lost and Found” (1980), he interviewed police officers and convicts, nurses and loggers, former slaves and former Ku Klux Klansmen, a typical crowd for Mr. Terkel.

Readers of his books could only guess at Mr. Terkel’s interview style. Listeners to his daily radio show, which was broadcast on WFMT since 1958, got the full Terkel flavor, as the host, with breathy eagerness and a tough-guy Chicago accent, went after the straight dope from such guests as Sir Georg Solti ,Toni Morrison and Gloria
Steinem.

“It isn’t an inquisition, it’s an exploration, usually an exploration into the past,” he once said, explaining his approach. “So I think the gentlest question is the best one, and the gentlest is, ‘And what happened then?’”

His death is not a surprise — he was 96 — but it is a blow. May he rest in peace.