Touch and Go

Starred review from August 27, 2007
After a lifetime of interviewing others, Terkel finally turns the tape recorder on himself. At least, that's what he would have us think. Terkel's memoir is more a medley of all the extraordinary characters he's encountered through his career, from the adult loners of his youth in Chicago's Wells-Grand Hotel, to New Deal politicians. Terkel details his long journey through law school, the air force, theater, radio, early television, sports commentary, jazz criticism and oral history. Surprisingly, a 12-time author who has built a career on emerging media is a hopeless Luddite. Unskilled with his tape recorder, the bread and butter of an oral historian, Terkel modestly attributes his knack for getting people to open up about their lives to his own “ineptitude” and “slovenliness.” This memoir, however, is a fitting portrait of a legendary talent who seeks truth with compassion, intelligence, moxie and panache. Never one to back down from authority, Terkel cracks jokes in law school classrooms and filibusters FBI visits by quoting long passages from Thoreau and Paine. He pogos between decades, reminding the reader that knowing history doesn't mean memorizing chronologies so much as it does attending to the lessons and voices of the past. He laments the “national Alzheimer's” afflicting this country, and fears the consequences if we don't regain consciousness. Americans might get to know their collective past a lot better if all history lessons were as absorbing and entertaining as this one.

Starred review from January 28, 2008
In a match made in heaven, one of the world's great raconteurs and journalists has written his second memoir (a loosely organized stream-of-consciousness remembrance) and turns to one of the most recognizable voices in audiobooks to read it. Studs Terkel, still hard at work in his 10th decade, remembers his childhood in the rip-roaring Chicago of the 1920s and 1930s, his favorite screen stars and his awakening to politics. Norman Dietz takes delight in each word, rolling them over his tongue as if the memories were his own and the pleasure personal. Terkel's book is not strong in the organization department, but what it lacks in order it makes up for with verve. Dietz follows Terkel's lead, depending on enthusiasm to carry the day. Considering the respective skills of author and reader, it should come as little surprise that it does. Simultaneous release with the New Press hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 27).