Word: terkel
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...Good War," Terkel...
NONFICTION: Bloods, Wallace Terry The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, 1941-1944, Lucjan Dobroszycki, Editor ∙Finding the Center, V.S. Naipaul ∙ "The Good War," Studs Terkel ∙The Weaker Vessel, Antonia Fraser ∙ Writers at Work, George Plimpton, Editor
...trenches. Terkel, a tireless 72, has lugged his tape machine cross-country and abroad to record memories of World War II, "the good war." The quotation marks are important. Terkel's army of disparate witnesses generally agrees that the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was an unconditional virtue. But the years since 1945 have taken a toll on that good feeling. Korea, Viet Nam and the rat race slowly eclipsed the enthusiasms and certainties of youth. Former enemies became allies; old comrades-in-arms are now adversaries. Robert Lekachman, an economics professor and Army survivor...
...this big percentage of high achievers and Trivial Pursuit candidates in a book by the U.S.'s leading troubadour of the unsung? Terkel, who knows everybody who is anybody, also knows that Everyman can always use a little help. No matter how moving and personal, back-to-back stories of suffering, death and destruction soon grow undifferentiated and numbing. It is something of a relief when Pauline Kael, film critic for The New Yorker, knocks old American war movies as "grotesque" and "condescending," even though it is doubtful she reacted that way at her neighborhood picture palace 40 years...
...words about editing. Terkel shapes his interviews into a uniform style: terse sentences that focus attention on what is said rather than how. One could quibble that this is not authentic oral history, but it works. Passion and pride not only survive intact, they are strengthened. Douglas MacArthur may have had it backward: old soldiers do die, but they do not fade away...