Studs Terkel: "We are not the Fortress America"

The indefatigable author talks about his new book on death, the war against terror, President Bush, FDR and Thomas Paine.

By Christopher Kemp

Nov. 21, 2001 | The career of Studs Terkel, 89, has spanned six decades. He has interviewed thousands of people and written 11 collections of oral histories, including "Working" and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Good War," published in 1984.

Terkel's latest book is "Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith." It explores cultural attitudes toward death and collects in one volume more than 60 interviews with ordinary people who share their thoughts on life, death and everything in between. Among his subjects, Terkel interviewed a firefighter, a cardiologist, a death-row parolee, a mortician, a cancer patient in remission, AIDS caseworkers and numerous others.

My mission: to interview the interviewer. With a record like Terkel's, such a proposition could be daunting, but it's not. Hard of hearing, he shouts down the phone in a friendly, wheezy voice, curses his hearing aid, asks me to speak up, to repeat myself, curses his hearing aid again and, at the same time, manages to talk at breakneck speed about anything and everything.

His doorbell could ring any moment, he says. He's expecting someone who wants his autograph. "I'm a half-assed celebrity in town," he jokes. Ironically, Terkel had already started working on "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" -- meeting and interviewing subjects -- when his wife died. "Well, it's a crazy moment," he says. "Don't call it serendipity, because it's tragic. I lost my wife." Death had come home. Terkel continued to do interviews in the months that followed, and managed to complete the book. He has since begun work on two more book projects.

"Hold the wire," he shouts suddenly when the doorbell finally rings. He reads my phone number back to me loudly, reads it again, excuses himself and hangs up. A little later, he calls back and we have a chance to talk.

"I'm going to have a martini," he says later still, as the interview draws to a close, "let's see, it's 20 to 5 here. H.L. Mencken said, 'Don't drink before sundown. Don't drink before sundown! ' Well, it's not sundown yet and I'm going to have a Bombay gin martini, and then we'll see what happens."

Why did you decide to write a book about death?

Death is the one experience none of us has had and all of us will have. As Kurt Vonnegut says in the book, it's the most ordinary thing in the world. At the same time, the book is about life, primarily. It's about life. I always like to do a sotto voce, cup my hand over my mouth and say: It's about l-i-f-e. Life.

In the introduction, you mention that author Gore Vidal suggested that you write a book about death as early as 1970. Why has it taken so long for you to finally approach the subject?

I had a radio show in Chicago for many years, on WFMT, a classical music station. I was its one aberration. It was an eclectic program, and I used to have a lot of people on, writers that I liked. And one of the writers was Gore Vidal. One day at the bar he says, "You ever thought about doing a book about people's thoughts on death?"

I said, "Oh my God." I was having a martini; I looked in the martini glass and all I saw was an olive. I was always told: "A book on death? They don't want to talk about that, you're crazy." But they want to talk about it. They want to. The irony is, it's the most alive book I've ever done.

Religion figures heavily in the responses of many of your subjects.

There's a recurring refrain in the book, you'll spot it: "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." Now, it sounds like one of those New Age bromides, but it's not. They want no middleman between themselves and God, whatever He, She or It is. And I find that fascinating. I find myself astonished by many of the responses.

Saul Bellow, a fellow octogenarian, once wrote that every man has his own poems.

Oh, that's wonderful. I like that.

Reading the oral histories you've collected here, it seems that Bellow was right and that what you've managed to do is capture your subject's poems.

I'm so glad you said that. I'm a gold prospector. I'm digging. Out of that digging comes tons of ore. Thirty pages. A lot of it is fat -- [I'm] cutting the lean from it, getting at the core. Now I've got eight pages. But it's still not a necklace, or a watch, or a gold bracelet. I have to bring it all together, and that's my necklace. Now the editing, that's the delicate part, now I'm a brain surgeon. You spoke of the poem within; I believe we all have it. The key to interviews is listening to the person, even to the silences. This is all parenthetical, you don't mind do you? I'm doing stream of consciousness now. I'm a short Joyce.

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