Si Possiamo!
- from today’s NYT
Archive for November, 2008
Studs Terkel - Hero of Many Simple Things
Studs Terkel slowly became a hero of mine, in the years when I was moving towards union work. I saw him in Eight Men Out playing a cigar-chomping sports writer covering the Black Sox series, and read excerpts of his book about World War II, one of the first celebrations of the “greatest generation”, but one which didn’t shy away from some of the grittier, nastier realities of the war.
He took a much greater space in my heart and mind when I saw him at Central Park Summerstage in 1989. He was ‘performing’ with John Sayles, who read from his fiction, including a scene of wives and girlfriends riding a bus to prison to visit their men (something which he handled with incredible warmth, sensitivity, and taste, as opposed to the hideously overwraught bus scenes from Oz).
Studs read from Working an oral history of employment in the US, conducted in the 1960s. One of the pieces he read was of a waitress he met in a restaurent. He introduced the piece by talking about Five Easy Pieces and the scene where Jack Nicholson harasses an uncooperative waitress (”what should I do with the chicken salad?” “carry it between your knees” with the soon-to-be-trademark Nicholson hiss.) After describing a bunch of younger people who hooted and whooped at Nicholson’s put-down, Studs got almost angry (but he was sparkly and elfin so it barely felt mad), “you damned little solecistic punks” I remember him saying and then he described the interview. Up on stage, he described the waitress as having a movement in her work that was like a dance (which he started to do), punctuated by small talk with regulars and kitchen staff. Then he read the piece which included details about her family, how she cared for her body, punished by work — it was moving and the thousands in the park were entranced. He went onto tell other stories including that of a 60+ year old couple who protested nuclear weapons and were serving time in separate jails — it was a ‘real love story’, according to Studs.
Listening to him talk is a treat — how he describes people, the stories he has, his own views on American politics, society, jazz, and baseball. What a treasure.