Studs Terkel is one of the under-rated heroes of American
literature: his books are unlike those of any other writer, with
the exception of the British Tony Parker. His approach is to take a
topic so big that it resists easy interpretation, such as work,
race, the American dream, or coming of age, and then to spend
months or years interviewing hundreds of subjects to glean their
thoughts and feelings about it. His work is distinguished from that
of more conventional historians and sociologists because he allows
his interviewees to speak for themselves, prefacing their words
with a short description, and editing them for sense and narrative;
what emerges are short passages in which people sum up everything
about themselves and the topic under discussion with power and
passion. The best pieces read like dramatic monologues by a
latter-day Robert Browning, working in prose and having done the
research of Henry Mayhew. This is not to say that Terkel himself is
without polemic or purpose: thus, Working's Introduction claims
that the book, 'being about work, is, by its very nature, about
violence - to the spirit as well as to the body.' Certainly, the
drudgery and soullessness which this implies are at times evident
in the workers' descriptions of their lots. Phrases about robots,
beasts of toil, and boredom appear across the class and income
divides, from farmers to models and bankers. However, as
individuals, and as such they emerge, Terkel's interviewees deny
this bleak outlook: a Copy Boy tells him, 'I want to be a
frontiersman of the spirit - where work is not a drag', questioning
the ethic of work like the spirited hippy radical he is but in a
way which would be both alien and comprehensible to the Fireman
with whom Terkel's book concludes. 'I worked in a bank,' he
declares. 'You know, it's just paper. It's not real. Nine to five
and it's shit. You're looking at numbers. But I can look back and
say, "I helped put out a fire. I helped save somebody." It shows I
did something on this earth.' Books about work are rare and
readable ones are rarer still: Terkel's achievement in producing
this book is to have made a momentous, underwritten subject, as
epic and fascinating as it should be. Most of us have to work,
after all. (Kirkus UK)
Perhaps Studs Terkel's best-known book, Working is a compelling,
fascinating look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of
over one hundred interviews conducted with everyone from
gravediggers to studio heads, this book provides a timeless
snapshot of people's feelings about their working lives, as well as
a relevant and lasting look at how work fits into American life.
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