Continuing our sad Monday-morning ritual, there’s a significant literary death from over the weekend to mention. Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian and radio personality Studs Terkel died last Friday after a long illness. Terkel, whose adopted first name owes its provenance to James T. Farrell’s American classic, Studs Lonigan, was a tireless chronicler of working class and disenfranchised Americans.
A committed leftist, he was passionately dedicated to his work. From USA Today:
In November 2007, at the age of 95, Terkel published a memoir, Touch and Go, in which he wrote: “My curiosity keeps me going. My epitaph is all set: ‘Curiosity did not kill this cat.’ I took a vacation once — it involved a beach — and to tell you the truth, I had no idea what to do with myself. It was torture. Work is life. Without it, there is no life.”
Why go to USA Today for Terkel’s epitaph? Why not reference a Chicago newspaper, like the Tribune, or the website of WFMT, the radio station where he worked (his title was “free spirit”) for 45 years?
Good thoughts, Terry. (And I also enjoyed your blog post remembering Studs.)
The Chicago Historical Society has had a nice site devoted to Studs for a few years now… StudsTerkel (dot) org
He will be missed!
“Take it easy, but take it.”
[...] Studs Terkel [...]