RIP Studs Terkel

curiosity did not kill this cat!

Aw man.

In 1997 he went to the White House to receive the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts with a group including Jason Robards, Angela Lansbury, conductor James Levine, Chicago religion scholar Martin Marty and Chicago arts patron Richard Franke. He was stopped at the White House gate and asked for identification. Studs, who had never driven a car, did not have a driver's license. The only thing he could come up with to appease the White House guards was his CTA seniors pass. They let him in.

The medal?

"I've got it here at home, somewhere," he said years later. "It's in a box, somewhere. I've got some cigars and the medal in the box."

96! Man, there's little chance I'll have that kind of run. Good on ya, Studs. And good on ya for being great, insightful, and endlessly readable.

"The most fun I've ever had doing a story was interviewing Studs in that living room," says WMAQ and WTTW television anchor/reporter Carol Marin. "He was unique."

He was in that living room last year when he said with zest that when he "checked out"-- as a "hotel kid" he rarely used the word "dying," preferring the euphemism "checking out" and its variants--he wanted to be cremated. He wanted his ashes mixed with those of his wife, which sat in an urn in the living room of his house, near the bed in which he slept and dreamed.

"My epitaph? My epitaph will be 'Curiosity did not kill this cat,'" he said.

He then said that he wanted his and Ida's ashes to be scattered in Bughouse Square, that patch of green park that so informed his first years in his adopted city.

"Scatter us there," he said, a gleeful grin on his face. "It's against the law. Let 'em sue us."

sad

naw, hell, at 96? That's just the ol' ashes-to-ashes. Nothing to be sad about. He wouldn't care much for tears, I don't think.

:( RIP

Fucker should've lived to see Obama sworn in.

he was a model for living and i feel confident had few regrets, but it makes me sad, too.

If it's sad, it's because he probably had another book in him. People were wondering years ago if he'd ever start to seem old and frail and senile... he never did.

Well, according to the story there is a new book coming out in a couple of weeks, so there's that.

OTM about Obama, though -- would have been nice if he maybe could have added a new chapter to his book "Race".

:( ive read working and division street, both were great

my dad tuned me and skot into his world at a ripe 12 and 8 respectively w div st and working and there were so many things and details and places and smells and acts and perversions and mundanities and horrors and bits and chunks and pieces that still stick with me...his ear and battered tape deck and cigar acting in tandem..nobody safe from a question..u should never fear a question...i will miss him even tho he was around forever...find his tv appearances they are gold.........rip studs

RIP. A person of vast empathy. Working is great.

Oh, shit! This man was a real hero.

RIP Studs

Won't be anyone in line to replace what he did, it doesn't seem.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081031/MEMORY/810319997

i dunno kenan -- someone i know is giving it his all...

RIP big man.

;_;

Weirdly, I just mentioned his name an hour before seeing the news. Only book of his I've read is Race, but it was pretty eye-opening for me at age 13. I guess I saw the theatrical adaptation of Working around then, too. My last encounter with him was a couple years ago, when he read at a bookstore in my neighborhood -- he was doddering (as one might expect of a man in his 90s) but still very sharp. A great writer and personality.

someone i know is giving it his all...

Luck to that person, who shall remain unnamed. :)

Big shoes, though. Hella big shoes.

i dunno kenan -- someone i know is giving it his all...

You're right, Frederick Wiseman is still around. ;-)

Indeed he is.

Oh, shit! This man was a real hero.

RIP Studs

^^^^^

I gathered that he won some new fans a few years back when he guested on "The Daily Show" to plug And They All Sang.

That made me happy. Rest in peace.

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/studs-terkel/177011911

that's just great. I hadn't seen that before.

adding to the choir of RIPs.

dude's name was studs

RIP

Well damn! Mr. Terkel was useful, funny and cool, thereby accomplishing a most enviable hat trick. May he rest in peace.

RIP great man. Reading him changed my views on America, history writing and journalism. 96 is a good innings but no less than he deserved.

Take it easy, but take it. RIP, Studs. What a cool guy.

an absolute hero. i think about how often i'd mention him as one of my favourite writers, only to realise that beyond a few introductions, i haven't actually read anything he's written, only questions asked and answers elited; he was a great service. the books are such high-density couriers of wisdom, ways to hear something from someone in three pages that you wouldn't have access to unless you'd known them for years. i've got division street out from the library at the moment, and was erring over picking up a reduced copy of hope dies last, just because someone else should read it, in bluestockings. a great man.

Take it easy, but take it.

I'd heard that before in reference to studs, but I didn't realize before today that it's actually from Woody Guthrie. Even better. Two angels in the architecture.

RIP

my mom met him several times - she was ALMOST in "work" but her bit got cut

err in "working" in mean

i

was on Ralph Nader's 2000 "Citizens Committee" -- so where's the hate?
I saw him interviewed maybe 4-5 years ago, at the New-York Historical Society I think; the first thing he said was "I'm deaf as a stone."

My friend's parents are in Working, they run a progressive regional newspaper in Kentucky.

A great agitator. RIP.

he had a memory like a steel trap - the biggest asset a reporter can have

Funny - I know next to nothing about him. He was one of those names bandied about.

some audio & video:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/11/studs-terkel-19.html

Edward Rothstein cluck-clucks at the end of this NYT piece:

Part of Mr. Terkel’s wide appeal was that he seemed to be a scrappy liberal in his choice of causes and concerns, but look more closely and it becomes less clear where his liberalism slips into radicalism. Though Mr. Terkel was not a theorist, nearly every one of the positions approvingly intimated by him seem to fit models shaped by Marxist theory; he even wore something red every day to affirm his attachment to the working class.

Mr. Terkel also provided a blurb for the memoirs of William Ayers, the Weatherman bomber whose connection with Barack Obama has been a point of controversy. “A deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world,” Mr. Terkel wrote. “Ayers provides a tribute to those better angels of ourselves.”

Mr. Terkel presented himself as an avuncular angel with close contact with the salt of the earth, a populist with a humane vision of the world. There are times such gifts are evident, but there are also times when such dreamers should make us wary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/books/03terk.html

What a pissy article. Apparently it's not allowed to be distinctive. That leaves Mr. Rothstein in the clear, then.

The difficulty is for readers who presume they are being presented history without perspective, just a series of oral histories. But its perspective actually seems to guide its strategy, so one is no longer sure what is being omitted and how much is being fully seen.

wow, how unlike the NY Times, Rothstein you fucking asshole.

"It's almost as if he had - and I hesitate to say this - a point of view"

I wish I could write a Letter to the Ed that would pass Gray Lady muster.

The difficulty is for readers who presume they are being presented history without perspective, just a series of oral histories. But its perspective actually seems to guide its strategy, so one is no longer sure what is being omitted and how much is being fully seen.

hahahahah you passed a journo 101 class good work dickhead

Interviewing Satchmo, Dylan, Pete Seeger:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4947854

THUMBS UP!

The Politics of Studs Terkel
To the Editor:

Re “He Gave Voice to Many, Among Them Himself,” by Edward Rothstein (An Appraisal, Arts pages, Nov. 3):

And who, Mr. Rothstein, is the Studs Terkel of the political right, seeking out the oral histories of those Enron employees who were recorded joking about “Grandma Millie,” a hypothetical victim of the rolling blackouts, and boasting about the millions they made for Enron while deliberately creating the California “energy crisis” of 2000-1?

Who is listening to those whose savings were eroded by Wall Street executives, who paid themselves millions of dollars for the task?

Perhaps we could recruit Mr. Rothstein to listen to the soldiers in Iraq who are fighting a war founded on lies and propaganda.

I applaud Mr. Rothstein’s insight: “No part of history or human experience should be ignored, but all of it needs to be placed in a larger context.” If Studs Terkel was a Marxist, as the article suggests, what is Mr. Rothstein?

Roger Ebert
Chicago, Nov. 3, 2008

The writer is a film critic at The Chicago Sun-Times.

<3 ebert

My NPR station was playing some of his interviews with women who lived through the depression, and I was completely riveted. Amazing, amazing stuff. He barely said a thing, and yet the interviews just naturally covered really poignant territory.

yah that was this american life. i'd always heard studs pop up on pacifica et al every now and then talking about his interviews but never actually heard them, deep shit

guess i should read working now

http://transom.org/shows/2001/20010725.terkel.borntolive.html

Terkel's 1961 radio collage 'Born To Live'. Reminds me the late 60's Glenn Gould Solitude Trilogy in many ways.

http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/2011-09-07/studs-terkel-surveys-americas-once-impregnable-fortress-soon-after-911-9