The Rumpus.net » Studs Terkel http://therumpus.net Books, Music, Movies, Art, Politics, Sex, Other Fri, 24 May 2013 22:16:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 Studs Terkel And The FBI http://therumpus.net/2009/11/studs-terkel-and-the-fbi/ http://therumpus.net/2009/11/studs-terkel-and-the-fbi/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:28:10 +0000 Michael Berger http://therumpus.net/?p=39068 “In the 1930s, Studs Terkel applied to the FBI to be a fingerprint guy — maybe if he’d gotten the job, we would have had “CSI: Studs Terkel.” But the FBI turned him away and in 1945 began surveillance that would last for more than four decades.”

At Jacket Copy, Carolynn Kellogg reports that the legendary oral historian’s concern for poor people made him a target of the Feds.

]]> “In the 1930s, Studs Terkel applied to the FBI to be a fingerprint guy — maybe if he’d gotten the job, we would have had “CSI: Studs Terkel.” But the FBI turned him away and in 1945 began surveillance that would last for more than four decades.”

At Jacket Copy, Carolynn Kellogg reports that the legendary oral historian’s concern for poor people made him a target of the Feds.

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2009/11/studs-terkel-and-the-fbi/feed/ 0 Like a Pack of Alaskan Dogs http://therumpus.net/2009/07/like-a-pack-of-alaskan-dogs/ http://therumpus.net/2009/07/like-a-pack-of-alaskan-dogs/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:00:40 +0000 Jeremy Hatch http://therumpus.net/?p=25485 “Ed Paulsen was nineteen in 1931. He was a job applicant. San Francisco. ‘I’d get up at five in the morning and head for the waterfront. Outside the Spreckels Sugar Refinery, outside the gates, there would be a thousand men. You know dang well there’s only three or four jobs.

]]> “Ed Paulsen was nineteen in 1931. He was a job applicant. San Francisco. ‘I’d get up at five in the morning and head for the waterfront. Outside the Spreckels Sugar Refinery, outside the gates, there would be a thousand men. You know dang well there’s only three or four jobs.

The guys would come out with two little Pinkerton cops: “I need two guys for the bull gang. Two guys to go into the hole.” A thousand men would fight like a pack of Alaskan dogs to get through there. Only four of us would get through.’

Young Paulsen took to the road, along with millions of others. He rode the freights. Half the time, the boxcar, standing room only, was his home. Somewhere out there, in Kansas or Nebraska or who knows where, there might be a job of some sort.”

Some perspective via Studs Terkel, from the introduction to the 1986 edition of Hard Times (1970), an oral history of the Great Depression.

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2009/07/like-a-pack-of-alaskan-dogs/feed/ 0 We Need Studs Terkel http://therumpus.net/2009/07/we-need-studs-terkel/ http://therumpus.net/2009/07/we-need-studs-terkel/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:09:59 +0000 Michael Berger http://therumpus.net/?p=24835 At the bookstore I work at, we recently got in a HUGE shipment of remaindered books. Books by Michael Ondaatje, Virginia Woolf, Alain de Botton, all of them brand-new and at bargan-bin prices. Which begs the question, do all books, no matter how timeless, relevant or HOT, eventually become remainders?

]]> At the bookstore I work at, we recently got in a HUGE shipment of remaindered books. Books by Michael Ondaatje, Virginia Woolf, Alain de Botton, all of them brand-new and at bargan-bin prices. Which begs the question, do all books, no matter how timeless, relevant or HOT, eventually become remainders? I think so. It means cheap, virtually new books for me and you and I don’t know what it means for the writer, living or dead.

In any case, many of the books that came in are by the legendary and recently deceased Studs Terkel, whom the Rumpus recently talked about in early June.

Now I can’t think of any work that is more timely than Studs Terkel’s oral histories and interviews with everyday Americans who lived through our nation’s most tumultuous years. Most tumultuous years? Oh wait–I think they’re happening now. Terkel’s complete Hard Times, his oral history of the Great Depression is on sale at Red Hill for $6.98. (We also have at Red Hill Terkel’s equally incredible Race, Hope Dies Last, American Dreams: Lost And Found, and Working. All brand new, thick paperbacks, recession-priced.) Not to be confused with the massive and heavily unedited New Hard Times which remains, as we go to press, only hypothetical. And which also begs the question: who will be our new Studs Terkel? Who will collect the oral histories of those of us who survived the Bush Nightmare and are now living through the New Hard Times?

I think the Rumpus is a good place to start. What do you think?

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2009/07/we-need-studs-terkel/feed/ 1 Working, as Adapted by Harvey Pekar http://therumpus.net/2009/06/pekar-adapts-terkels-working/ http://therumpus.net/2009/06/pekar-adapts-terkels-working/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:00:45 +0000 Jeremy Hatch http://therumpus.net/?p=21312 Harvey Pekar, the only famous comic-book creator who isn’t an artist himself, last month released a graphic adaptation of Studs Terkel’s Working with The New Press. Dave Gilson summarizes it on Mother Jones as not “the most far-fetched attempt to repackage” the classic 1974 collection of interviews with blue-collar workers — “that would be the 1978 Broadway musical of the same name.” Pekar worked with 16 artists on the adaptations; as usual, the quality of the artwork is wildly uneven, but as Gilson puts it, “the original words rise above the rough spots (even when presented in that goofily unproletarian typeface, Comic Sans).” And “the storytellers’ sense of unease that the bottom could drop out of the American Dream at any moment is all too familiar.” The adaptation was co-edited by Paul Buhle, who put out The Beats: A Graphic History in March.

]]> Harvey Pekar, the only famous comic-book creator who isn’t an artist himself, last month released a graphic adaptation of Studs Terkel’s Working with The New Press. Dave Gilson summarizes it on Mother Jones as not “the most far-fetched attempt to repackage” the classic 1974 collection of interviews with blue-collar workers — “that would be the 1978 Broadway musical of the same name.” Pekar worked with 16 artists on the adaptations; as usual, the quality of the artwork is wildly uneven, but as Gilson puts it, “the original words rise above the rough spots (even when presented in that goofily unproletarian typeface, Comic Sans).” And “the storytellers’ sense of unease that the bottom could drop out of the American Dream at any moment is all too familiar.” The adaptation was co-edited by Paul Buhle, who put out The Beats: A Graphic History in March. Some sample panels can be viewed over at the Utne Reader.

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