Studs Terkel Book Probes Nation’s Soul
“My American Century” By Studs Terkel (The New Press, 544 pages, $25)
He is a legend, and the custodian of American democracy. In eight oral histories, whose themes range from the Great Depression and World War II to racism and aging, Studs Terkel has probed the national psyche. “My American Century,” a “quasi-anthology,” offers a sampling of these extraordinary books, and it is a rare treat and a privilege to have it.
Terkel arrives armed. “Objectivity has escaped me,” he says, tongue in cheek. Pondering whether “the American dream is in the past,” he is “filled with wonder” at the resilience of ordinary men and women, the real heroes and heroines, who risk much for social justice, constantly choosing community over self. He likes people who “behave decently,” who “stick their noses into things.”
The most unforgettable character of “My American Century” is the author himself, humane, salty and witty. His technique is not question and answer, useful mostly for “determining favored detergents, toothpaste and deodorants.” Instead he makes conversation. Always respectful, he listens. Listening leads to truth and people discover the truth as Studs Terkel listens to them.
His subjects at once recognize his decency, honesty and good will, in part because among the morally frail, he does not exempt himself, even of the racism “interred within the bones of all of us.” Upbraided for doing an interview and then not remaining to take supper, Terkel, appalled at his own insensitivity, of course stays. People pour their hearts out to him, like the steel mill worker who laments, “Picasso can point to a painting. What can I point to?”
Terkel’s is passionate prose. Speaking for his most benighted subjects, he reflects: “Forfeiting their own experience, their own native intelligence, their personal pride, they allow more celebrated surrogates, whose imaginations may be no larger than theirs, to think for them.”
Always Studs allows them their say. A cab driver approves of the Christmas saturation bombing of North Vietnam: “We gotta show ‘em we’re number one.”
“Are you number one?” Terkel asks softly.
“I’m number nothin’,” the man admits. So Studs Terkel probes the insecurities of our national soul.
Terkel reserves a special admiration for those who triumph over ignorance, like the former Ku Klux Klan “Exalted Cyclops” who becomes an advocate of civil rights and a trade union spokesman; as Terkel puts it, he now “sounds like Martin Luther King.”
“They’ll be nobody like you ever again,” someone says of people in general. He could have been speaking about Studs Terkel himself, our national conscience and that rarest of authors whose humanity shines through these pages, resplendent, unique and unforgettable.