Touch and Go: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Studs Terkel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2007

The extraordinary life and times of an American icon—the Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian's long-awaited memoir—a major publishing event.

At nearly ninety-five, Studs Terkel has written about everyone's life, it seems, but his own. In Touch and Go, he offers a memoir which—embodying the spirit of the man himself—is youthful, vivacious, and enormous fun.

Terkel begins by taking us back to his early childhood with his father, mother, and two older brothers, describing the hectic life of a family trying to earn a living in Chicago. He then goes on to recall his own experiences—as a poll watcher charged with stealing votes for the Democratic machine, as a young theatergoer, and eventually as an actor himself in both radio and on the stage—giving us a brilliant and often hilarious portrait of the Chicago of the 1920s and '30s. He tells of his beginnings as a disc jockey after World War II and as an interviewer and oral historian—a craft he would come to perfect and indeed personify. Finally, he discusses his involvement with progressive politics, leading inevitably to his travails during the McCarthy period when he was blacklisted and thrown out of work despite having become by then one of the country's most popular TV hosts.

Fans of Studs Terkel will find much to discover in these remarkable reminiscences. Others will be captivated to learn of the unique and eclectic life of one of America's greatest living legends.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

Although listeners may be initially disappointed to learn that renowned author and oral historian Terkel does not read his memoir, they will be pleasantly surprised with Dietz’s performance. He effortlessly conveys the rise and fall of Terkel’s rhythmic vocal patterns, and his voice, though not nearly as hoarse and throaty as the Pulitzer Prize winner’s, suggests a younger, less-battered vocal apparatus better suited to recount episodes from Terkel’s personal and professional life in his beloved Chicago. Terkel brings bygone eras and more recent times alive, and Dietz steps up to fill the microphone with the 95-year-old legend’s unforgettable recollections. --Whitney Scott --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 269 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (November 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595580433
• ISBN-13: 978-1595580436
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #957,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Studs Terkel (1912-2008) was a free spirit, an outspoken populist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a terrible ham, and one of the best-loved characters on the American scene. Born in New York in 1912, he lived in Chicago for over eight decades. His radio show was carried on stations throughout the country.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An account of a life lived honestly and well December 13, 2007

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

Imagine yourself sitting on a front porch on a quiet summer evening, listening to a beloved uncle recount stories you've heard half a dozen times before. He rambles from time to time, and the names of the characters sometimes blur, but the tales are rich and populated with colorful characters, conjuring up vivid images of bygone days. That's the feeling one gets encountering Studs Terkel in his delightful collection of reminiscences, TOUCH AND GO.

The son of immigrant parents, Terkel was born in New York City in 1912 ("three weeks after the Titanic blithely sailed into the tip of that iceberg. Make of it what you will."). In 1921, he moved to Chicago, the city with whom his life has been linked so intimately. There, his parents ran a series of rooming houses and small hotels; his mother Annie, the dominant parent, even beat up a pimp on one occasion. Studs spent his free time hanging out among the soapbox orators at Bughouse Square, Chicago's low-rent version of London's Hyde Park. Those familiar with Terkel's streetwise persona may be surprised to learn that he graduated from the elite University of Chicago Law School, although he confesses that a career in the law "just wasn't there for me." Indeed, his fondest recollection of his law school days was the transfer on his trolley ride in an area known as "Bronzeville," where he first encountered the blues, firing a lifelong passion for that music.

Although TOUCH AND GO follows an arguably chronological path, it's the frequent detours that offer the most pleasure. Readers looking for a thumbnail sketch of Terkel's career should be satisfied with this sentence: "I have been an eclectic disk jockey; a radio soap opera gangster; a sports and political commentator; a jazz critic; a pioneer in TV, Chicago style; an oral historian and a gadfly." Perhaps one key to his long life that emerges from these pages is that whatever he did was done with zest for the task of the moment and for the people he engaged as he performed it.

Best known for incomparable oral histories like WORKING, HARD TIMES and "THE GOOD WAR" (Ida, his wife of 60 years, insisted he put the title in quotation marks), Terkel's attention always has been focused on what he calls the "etceteras of history," unknown men and women to whom he has given voice through his work. Befitting his down-to-earth style, Terkel doesn't reveal any sophisticated interviewing techniques. "Respect," he says, is the gift he brings to the encounters with his subjects. "The person recognizes that you respect them because you're listening. Because you're listening, they feel good about talking to you."

As entertaining and sometimes touching as Terkel's stories of his colorful friends and acquaintances are (the writer Nelson Algren and television pioneer Dave Garroway make their appearances, as does John Scopes a generation after the Monkey Trial), TOUCH AND GO doesn't consist merely of one man's web of memories spun from a litany of entertaining stories. Terkel, an unabashed liberal who calls himself a "radical conservative," is harsh in his judgment of our apathetic political culture, even going so far as to invert Hannah Arendt's famous characterization of Adolf Eichmann's "banality of evil," to accuse our age of embodying the "evil of banality." He writes: "Basically, there is an affront going on, an assault on our intelligence and sense of decency. We have a language perverted, a mind low-rated, and of course, the inevitable end result --- forgetfulness. This is what haunts me at the moment." From a lifetime of advocacy for the underdog, he has earned the right to express those blunt sentiments.

"Oh to be remembered --- isn't that what this is all about?" Terkel writes. By that standard he has little to fear. At age 95, the survivor of quintuple bypass surgery and a heart valve replacement (at 93), it's doubtful we'll see another book by this remarkable man. Studs Terkel has had the dual blessing of longevity and wonderful experiences to fill his years to the brim. TOUCH AND GO is more than a memoir of a long life; it is one man's account of a life lived honestly and well.

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg ([e-mail])

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Kaleidoscope Of A Book December 10, 2007

By FQHBOOKS VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

When I picked up TOUCH AND GO, I wondered how Studs Terkel was going to compress his 95 years into 256 pages. It (sort) of does it by recollecting a time in history--the Depression, for example--and falling in and out of it, or spinning and refracting it, using the kaleidoscope of his life.

History buffs (of which I'm not) will enjoy this book (he includes an extensive index), and so will people who've strong ties or interest in Chicago, and Terkel fans. I'd never read anything of Terkel's before so I was introduced to his:

* Dry sense of humor: "The last time I saw Bernays, he was approaching the century mark. He was frail and hard of hearing, and his memory played hide-and-seek at times, but he still had almost all his marbles."

* Grasp of Chicago vernacular: "Who you? Dis seat's mine. Possession's nine-tent's a da law, ain't it?"

* Descriptive sense: "Lowell Sherman immediately comes to mind. He was among the first. Brilliantined, patent-leather black hair, with a mustache that also appeared patented; evil-eyed; a cad in a class by himself. Lew Cody, a fair-skinned, craven toady up to no good. Their mustaches gave them away. What the scarlet letter was to Hester Prynne, the damnable facial adornment was to them." (He's noticed a lot of mustaches over the years.)

* And most importantly, how Terkel has chosen the people he wants to write about: "When I look for people, I'm not looking only for those who share my views; I'm looking for those who have grown to think a certain way, who have changed their views. A number of conservative people are in my books; not as many as more progressive thinkers, but that's not the point of my books at all. I'm looking for those who can talk about how they see their lives and the world around them. Who can explain how and why they became one way or another."

I enjoyed being introduced to Terkel through this book. Reading it I realize there is STILL more "stuff" I don't know a thing about, but probably should look into. Gee thanks, Mr. Terkel.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I love Studs November 29, 2007

By Samuel Dachs

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm a bit prejudiced, I love Studs--I love listening him on WFMT, and I love reading his books.

He really loves and respects people and they respond to him--he is great listener and storyteller---this book is sort of a conversation with a really interesting guy over a couple of martinis in a noisy bar--

I really liked this book, and if you like Studs, and are interested in people, you will like it too,