Word: terkel
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Supply-side economics had the common-sense appeal of an old proverb, but nothing guaranteed it would work. Too much American dream, and not enough Studs Terkel, its ideal viewpoint pictured the sort of workplace the country could be, without the realities progress to that state would encounter. The numbers never did add up, and that's what made David Stockman so important. His mission as director of the Office of Management and Budget was to convince an incredulous public and Congress that the numbers would add up even if it didn't look that way. His responsibility clear from...
...country runs and runs, from fear of death and pollution and old age as well as from longing for health, beauty and wellbeing. But what Americans will do with their revitalized corpora remains to be seen. Author Studs Terkel (Working) views the goings-on like a blue-collar Jeremiah. Says he: "Working on your body is narcissistic. It's basically a solo act. Narcissism comes when you're not connected to the rest of the world." By contrast, Dr. Dennis Colacino, director of the PepsiCo Fitness Programs, proclaims: "It gives people a better self-image. It helps...
Gwaltney, following the lead of interviewers like Studs Terkel, lets dozens of average people talk into his tape recorder. He didn't seek out activists or politicians; he seemed, instead, to meet many of the sort of people respected for living quiet, aboveboard lives; the they hate, so much and with so much fire, is what makes this book so scary...
Grim tribes of sociologists have reported back from office and factory that most workers find their labor mechanical, boring, imprisoning, stultifying, repetitive, dreary, heartbreaking. In his 1972 book Working, Studs Terkel began: "This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence-to the spirit as well as to the body." The historical horrors of industrialization (child labor, Dickensian squalor, the dark satanic mills) translate into the 20th century's robotic busywork on the line, tightening the same damned screw on the Camaro's firewall assembly, going nuts to the banging, jangling Chaplinesque whirr of modern...
ALTHOUGH IT APPEALS to the populist in us all, oral history is basically a lazy man's version of the real thing. It is raw material, not finished product. Studs Terkel, who popularized the discipline, combines a sharp editing style and evocative introductions of his speakers to create a picture larger than the transcripts would offer by themselves. Most importantly, however, Terkel picks the right people, the biggest responsibility of the Oral historian...