RIP Studs Terkel. He was 96. You can hear some of the interviews for Hard Times, his book on the Great Depression, here. And here he is on The Daily Show.
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The Edge of the American West 
10 comments
October 31, 2008 at 3:49 pm
ari
The vote sign in front of the barn is awesome. You’re my internetz hero. Also, that’s very sad news about Turkel, who could claim to be one of the most important voices in this country. Still, best to toast a life well lived, I suppose.
October 31, 2008 at 3:53 pm
eric
I was wondering how long it would take people to notice the sign.
October 31, 2008 at 3:58 pm
urbino
In my case, forever, if ari hadn’t mentioned it.
Terkel’s a loss, and the timing is rather exquisite.
October 31, 2008 at 4:02 pm
JPool
Studs has always been my model of the kind of old man I want to be someday: aware of how much of the world he’s seen, but still active and interested in what the world is and what it will become; above all a great listener.
October 31, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Josh
I figured ari’d put up the sign.
October 31, 2008 at 5:54 pm
PorJ
Even before grad school I couldn’t get enough of Terkel’s work. I still re-read books like Hard Times and especially Working for the natural poetry of the recollections. He brought a fine journalistic sensibilty to oral history and a complex (and ironic) historical understanding to journalism. He’s somewhere in the middle. But I have to honestly say – I’ve wondered sometimes about his almost *too* perfect interviews, if you know what I mean. Could Eric (“Elbows”) Nesterenko and Steve Hamilton, for instance, be two of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers? Terkel sure made them seem brilliant.
October 31, 2008 at 6:56 pm
bridgett
It bums me out that he didn’t make it until Wednesday morning.
October 31, 2008 at 8:36 pm
tf smith
Here’s to Studs – hope he got to vote absentee.
October 31, 2008 at 11:15 pm
bitchphd
I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read any of his stuff.
November 1, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Michael Elliott
I read a lot of Terkel as an undergraduate, and he’s probably one of the many reasons I got into this biz. He understood that the big truths are in the small details. I read the obit in the NY times today and was struck by the way that the New Deal — through the Federal Writer’s Project — was crucial to his career. You could say that he spent the rest of his life paying back his country for that.