Word: terkel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...SELECTING the subject of his latest book, Studs Terkel asks a question of agonizing, perhaps even dangerous, consequence. Terkel wants to know about that fundamental, if undefinable American truism, the American Dream. Terkel, of course, asks what the Dream is, but that is not and has never been the most important issue about this curious and wonderful native invention. The vital question is whether the Dream still exists...
...style, Terkel lets others answer the question for him. Those who lived through the Depression told their story in Hard Times; assorted laborers talked about what they did for a living in Working. In American Dreams, Terkel achieves the extraordinary goal for constructing a book with vivid theme without writing more than a few paragraphs of text. Again, his people supply the words, but Terkel's marvellously aggressive listening and sensitive editing combine to form a lush, almost overgrown book about Americans and their dreams...
...American Dream, which Terkel's people define roughly as the ability to take control of one's own life, binds the American consciousness. For the more than three centuries that Westerners have been coming here, the promise of a better life, or at least a fairer chance at it, has been the most seductive enticement over proffered by one land to others. If, then, the idea of coming to America has faded in allure, and, more importantly, in actual worth, then everything has changed about America--and for the worse...
...LUCKY for the country, Terkel's people by and large say the Dream still lives. Not every story is happy--in fact, most have a thin filament of personal disappointment stretched across the top. But the near-universal insistence of Terkel's subject that the Dream is alive somewhere, if not in their own backyards, testifies that the nation has not suffered terminal spiritual damage...
...seriousness of his quest and the importance of its ramifications. Terkel's book never strays to meaningless platitudes and unctuous rambling. The book presents people talking about their lives; and "people," given a sympathetic listener, speak sense, not solemn pontifications about "the city on the hill." The author's selection of these people is inspired. Terkel didn't look for the "correct" ethnic or social mix--this is no Miller Beer commercial with the required ratio of three whites to every Black. He wants a cross-section of opinions, not faces...