Despite it supposedly being in the small print of being a revolutionary socialist, one of the reasons that I never fell into the knuckle-headedness of casual anti-americanism was because I was lucky enough to discover the wonderful books of Studs Terkel a few years back. A popular Chicago disc jockey of the last sixty years, Terkel is best known for his oral histories that he produced over the last thirty years.
In these books, themed around such subjects as the Second World War - in Terkel's title, 'the Good War' - the depression of the thirties and race, he unobstrusively sat back and allowed people from all walks of American life talk about both their memories and their everyday lives. Very much like his British counterpart, the late Tony Parker, in giving people who would otherwise not be seen in public life or whose opinions would not be sought by tv and print journalists the opportunity to give expression to their intelligence, compassion and humour Terkel performed such a public service in knocking down those all too easy stereotypes that people fall back on when thinking about people in the States.
So, it was nice to see the reports that he won the first ever Dayton Literary Peace Prize yesterday. No, I hadn't heard of the award either but I'm hoping that in winning the award, and receiving the attendant plaudits and coverage, more people will check out his books and discover what I discovered: the essential decency and humanism of the people within its pages.
2 comments:
Many of us got introduced to Studs Terkel's work through Working, which was probably his most popular book. Most of us read that quite a while ago, and I've read some articles talking about how working in the U.S. has gotten a lot worse than when Studs wrote that book, back in the '70s. A number of authors have tried to do updates of sorts (there's one that came out very recently), but people say they're just not as good.
The only Terkel book I've read is Working, which is great just to hear how people really talked a few decades ago. And it's a huge book--I read all the women and the jobs that interested me the most.
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