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...Terkel, 79, put oral history on the best-seller lists. History may be too strong a word. What Terkel does is refine and package the radio call-in show between hard covers. It is a natural step for the man who for 35 years has been the host of his own talk show on Chicago's WFMT. In his checked shirts, and suits that look like they are sent out to be cleaned and rumpled, Terkel is the city's most recognizable author. The dapper Saul Bellow would be a close second. Scott Turow's commuter camouflage renders him nearly...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Talking About the Untalkable | 3/30/1992 | See Source »

...someone who transcribes other people's words truly be called a writer? In Terkel's case the question seems irrelevant. His books may not have the scope of literature or the authority of social science, but they do pack the wallop of theater -- particularly the declamatory, political theater of the 1930s as exemplified by Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Talking About the Untalkable | 3/30/1992 | See Source »

Waiting for Studs, one does not have to wait too long. He has published eight books, including Hard Times (the Depression) and "The Good War" (World War II). There was also Talking to Myself, a memoir of a life that included careers in acting, sports announcing and journalism. Terkel's earlier ambition was "to have a nice civil service job." It is hard to imagine. His disdain for bureaucracy and sympathy for the underdog would have produced an unlikely paper pusher. The crusty populism asserted itself two years ago when his publisher, Andre Schiffrin, was forced out as head...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Talking About the Untalkable | 3/30/1992 | See Source »

Readers should also receive substantial returns on their investment. Most of Terkel's working-class and professional respondents are from the Chicago region, but their attitudes are not regional. Orchestrated by Terkel, the consensus is not out of line with what most readers, North, South, East or West, already feel in their guts: that race relations and perceptions of them are more confusing and emotionally complex than they were in the hopeful days of the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Talking About the Untalkable | 3/30/1992 | See Source »

...tensions appear greatest where the economy is weakest and the class lines closest. So white workers competing for the same jobs as black workers express their resentment about affirmative action. Equally indignant are blacks who began to enter the work force only to be ejected by the recession. Periodically Terkel calls on an expert to provide an overview to the folk commentary. Despite obvious racial progress, few are optimistic. "You have young black men coming up now who would have worked in factories," says Professor Douglas Massey of the University of Chicago. "But there are far less such places today...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Talking About the Untalkable | 3/30/1992 | See Source »

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