Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel is a squat, 61-year-old man who has spent the past three years interviewing Americans about their jobs. He began in Chicago, where he is the host of a daily radio program. There he interviewed an aging waitress, a receptionist, a barber. In Indiana, he talked with a strip miner. In Kentucky, a farmer. In Lordstown, Ohio, a union leader at the General Motors assembly plant.

When he finished, Terkel had interviewed over 200 people (the transcripts filled more than 15,000 typed pages.) He cut this down to 134 interviews, most about five pages long, and organized them into a book.

The result is "Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do" (589 pp., $10), which Pantheon published this week. "Working" is Terkel's third book of interviews on a theme. His first, "Division Street: America" (1967) was, he says, "a report from an American village, Chicago," modeled after Jan Myrdal's "Report From a Chinese Village," which Pantheon published several years earlier. His second interview book, "Hard Times" (1970), was an oral history of the Depression.

Terkel was in Boston last week for the book author's obligatory plug-it and-run tour. Such promotional chores are part of his job, part of what he does all day now. But he would rather stay in Chicago, and he plans to cut the trip short, exercising a freedom of choice that the waitress, barber, and strip miner in his book (all pseudononymous characters) would probably envy.

Late last Friday afternoon, Terkel stretched majestically on his bed at the Copley Plaza. His hands were locked together behind his white hair to form a headrest; at the other end of his small body, his stocking feet were crossed. Terkel must have sensed the grandeur of the pose. "Do I look like one of those hoods?," he asked, thinking perhaps of some mafia chieftan.

No, he did not. He looked more scrappy than tough, more homely than slick--like the kind of man who would be named Studs. Terkel spoke energetically in a voice loaded with street flavor and professional resonance.

He began the interview by talking about the genesis of "Working," giving full credit for the idea behind the book to Andre Schiffrin, his editor.

Terkel: At the time Andre made that suggestion, we were just starting to question the quote-unqoute "work ethic" that Honest Dick talks about so much. There was that moment when we had that leisure after the Depression--post-World War II, in the sixties--when young people began to question, and say, "I want to do what I want to do, what I like to do." Well, that caught on in a way [laughs]--strangely enough. And so you got the young auto workers--young auto workers--absent on Mondays or Fridays: "Fuck it, doing all that stuff!" And of course, Lordstown is the great example. And the older guys, their fathers, the Depression people, said, "You got to," 'cause they never question. So they started thinking, as they're about to retire, "That's shit I've been doing all my life."

So this moment has come upon us. Now there's automation, we have the computer. This applies to white collar as well as blue, of course. The bank teller, she's wondering about her work: Is it that important? Remember the marvelous fireman at the end of the book, Tommy Patrick?

TOM PATRICK

(Excerpt from his interview in "Fathers and Sons," a chapter in "Working.")

"The fuckin' world's so fucked up, the country's fucked up. But the firemen, you actually see them produce. You see them put out a fire. You see them come out with babies in their hands. You see them give mouth-to-mouth when a guy's dying. You can't get around that shit. That's real. To me, that's what I want to be.

"I worked in a bank. You know, it's just paper. It's not real. Nine to five and it's shit. You're lookin' at numbers. But I can look back and say, 'I helped put out a fire. I helped save somebody.' It shows something I did on this earth."

Ah, that's the last line in the book, isn't it? There's something I did on this earth. That's why I'm here on this earth. Here to do what? To save lives. Save a baby, breathe life into a dying stranger, black or white.

Freud talked about the two prime impulses of man: Lieben and Arbeiten, Love and Work. Now you don't have many books about love. You have books about the technique of sex, the crap books. Technique--that's interesting. No feeling--the technique of sex. But even so, the pretense of books about sex. About work, nothing. And so, in a sense, Andre had a hunch. He just knew. It's hardly been written about. It seems to have caught, in that sense, something people have felt but haven't articulated.

Q: How would you characterize your role in putting the book together, in getting people to articulate those feelings?

A: I've written the introduction to the book, as well as brief introductions to some profiles. But the book was written by 134 people. Now, I'm not being unduly modest--just explaining what is. What is, I made the book, I mean wrote the book. But the analogy I draw is between myself and a gold prospector. The gold prospector looks for the place, the terrain where there may be something below the surface that is gold. So in 1849 they head off for California, and later on for the Klondike in Alaska, right? Well, I head for certain territory, the territory being that person, whoever he is. He may be interesting, may have some gold in his life. So you find the place, the prospector does, by virtue of some divining rod or some hunch. That's how I find the person. Then he, the prospector, starts digging, digging, digging deep into the earth. I don't dig so much as just start digging operations in which the person is talking--in that sense, digging, into his life. Now finally, the prospector finds the ore--what he thinks is the ore--very rough stuff. In my case, each interview, when transcribed, is 100 pages, let's say. Imagine 100 pages for each person: the book would be 50 million words, 50,000 pages. So suppose there are ten pages in it of 100, one-tenth, or eight pages, that is the gold. You've got to synthesize and cut. The gold prospector does what? He refines, doesn't he?

So how could I describe what I've been doing? An adventure. Also trying to find different people, whether it be the car hiker [parking lot attendant], Lovin' Al Pommier, or a spot welder, or the airline stewardess, or the telephone operator. Or a certain waitress in a restaurant I went to. She seemed good. The one I called Dolores Dante.

DOLORES DANTE

(an excerpt from her interview in "Footwork," a chapter in "Working")

She has been a waitress in the same restaurant for twenty-three years. Many of its patrons are credit card carriers on an expense account--conventioneers, politicians, labor leaders, agency people. Her hours are from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., six days a week.

"I became a waitress because I needed money fast, and you don't get it in an office. My husband and I broke up and he left me with debts and three children. My baby was six months. The fast buck, your tips. The first ten-dollar bill that I got as a tip, a Viking guy gave to me. He was a very robust, terrific atheist. Made very good conversation for us, 'cause I am too.

"I just can't keep quiet. I have an opinion on every single subject there is. In the beginning it was theology, and my bosses didn't like it. Now I am a political and my bosses don't like it. I speak sotto voce. But if I get heated, then I don't give a damn. I can't be servile. I give service. There is a difference.

"It would be very tiring if I had to say, 'Would you like a cocktail?' and say that over and over. So I come out different for my own enjoyment. I would say, 'What's exciting at the bar that I can offer?' I can't say, 'Do you want coffee?' Maybe I'll say, 'Are you in the mood for coffee?' It becomes theatrical and I feel like Mata Hari and it intoxicates me.

"People imagine a waitress couldn't possibly think or have any kind of aspiration other than to serve food. When somebody says to me, 'You're great, how come you're just a waitress?' Just a waitress. I'd say, 'Why, don't you think you deserve to be served by me?' It's implying that he's not worthy, not that I'm not worthy. It makes me irate. I don't feel lowly at all. I myself feel sure. I don't want to change the job. I love it.

"Tips? I feel like Carmen. It's like a gypsy holding out a tambourine and they throw the coin. [Laughs] There might be occasions when the customers might intend to make it demeaning--the man about town, the conventioneer. When the time comes to pay the check, he would do little things, 'How much should I give you?' He might make an issue about it. I did say to one, 'Don't play God with me. Do what you want.' I would spit it out, my resentment--that he dares make me feel I'm operating only for a tip.

"After 16 years--that was seven years ago--I took a trip to Hawaii and the Caribbean for two weeks. Went with a lover. The kids saw it--they re all married now. [Laughs] One of my daughters said, 'Act your age.' I said, 'Honey, if I were acting my age, I wouldn't be walking. My bones would ache. You don't want to hear about my arthritis. Aren't you glad I'm happy?'"

Q: In part one of The New York Time's review of "Working," which appeared March 21, Anatole Broyard wrote: "This is the era of sentimental sociology, the apocalypse of the ordinary man. You would think they had never met one before, the way some social scientists surround him with astonishment."

A: Anatole Broyard has a problem. The fact is, he's never met anybody outside of the people of his own particular milieu, whatever that might be. And he has a very deep, deep illness--a malaise. It's sad. He happens to be a good writer. He's also nutty as a fruitcake to me, you see. I shouldn't say that, 'cause in a sense he pays perverse tribute to my writing. He's implying that I'm a good writer but wasting my time with these worthless people, this inert mass of people. Of course, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He's never met 'em. 'Cause I've met 'em. [Laughs] That's pretty exciting, you know. Once you get a person alone, each one is unique. Each one has his own way of speaking, which I believe because I've seen it, I've heard it. I was there, don't you understand? [Laughs] It isn't a question of making things up: I heard it. [Laughs]

Q: He accuses you of romanticizing the common man. Let me read you a quote from the second part of his review that ran on March 22: "In yesterday's column, I raised some questions about the nature of the evidence Studs Terkel gathered by tape recording 130 people talking about their jobs. Were they telling the truth? Did they know the whole truth about themselves? Is 'Working' an accurate picture or one more instance of the intellectual's tendency to translate the ordinary American into a tragic figure trapped by fate?"

A: Well, there he goes again. Ordinary America. Is he extraordinary? Is his story more exciting than the story, say, of Tommy Patrick? Really, is he more poetic than Tommy Patrick? He's more literate in the academic sense. We're talking now about language and life. Who has a more exciting life? I don't know. Each is exciting in its own way.

Q: What kind of withdrawal symptoms do you have? You must see a lot of people these days that you wish you could put in the book.

A: Yeah, there's this guy George Gloss, who has the second-hand book shop called the Brattle where I was looking for Nelson Algren's book "Come Morning." He is funny--would have been great.

And invariably somebody will say, "Why didn't you have somebody like me in it?" They want that piece of whatever it is--not immortality--hunk of themselves somewhere over and beyond their immediate physical being.

Did I tell you about the old black man I interviewed for "Division Street?" Oh, he was fantastic. He's about 85 or so, retired--worked as a boner for a meat packing company.

He said, "You coming to see me: what have I got to say that's important?" Now, that is the reason, I suppose, why I'm doing all these books. People feel they have nothing to say. But of course their lives are very rich.

Q: What struck you most about the interviews when you read them over in transcript form?

A: I suppose what struck me most, as I would read them aloud sometimes to my wife or someone else, was the sense of life. There's a life to it. It's exciting as hell when you finish some good ones. About work, there's a wild humor sometimes. Mostly, the self-contradictions in people's thoughts, psyches, about work. Like the elderly switchboard operator in the motel saying, "Oh, I love my work. Oh, I'm happy, I'm very happy with my work. These young girls, they're not as conscientious as I am. Once, though, at two in the morning"--let's say she worked for Holiday Inn--"I'd answer it, 'Marriott Inn.'" And I would say, "Why did you do that?" She'd say, "I don't know what made me do it. Just for a lark, I guess. Want to make the night more exciting. You know what I'd like to do some day? They think we're nothing. We're the center of communications. I'd like to pull all those plugs out and mix them all up. Wouldn't that be great! I'd like to do that." The woman says she loves her job, see, so she's marvelous.

Or the young gas meter reader. I call him Conrad Swibel. He says, "Oh, you gotta fight those dogs off. But every once in a while, say in the summer time, in a suburb out there, these young housewives, they're sunning themselves, you know? And she's in a bikini, you know, and her back is to the sun, lying on her stomach, and the bra is loose. And I go up close and I say, 'GAS METER READER!' She turns around, and I see a lot, you know. She says, 'Why didn't you announce yourself?!' And I say, 'Well, I didn't know, M'am.' You know what? It makes the day go faster." [Laughs.]

I suppose what I find most that really moves me, and I hope Broyard doesn't mind too much my saying this, is that survival quality in the midst of stuff that could make people automatons, robots. They're not yet that, and that's fantastic. This durable quality of the human species is incredible, you know.

"Anatole Broyard is nutty as a fruitcake. He's implying that I'm a good writer but wasting my time with worthless people. Of course, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about."