Studs Terkel, R.I.P.
Oh shit. Studs Terkel has died. He was 96. He was the blackest white man I ever met. Blacker even than his lifelong friend the novelist Nelson Algren, another black man who happened to be born white.
Anyway, here's what several former Chicago Sun-Times colleagues of mine had to say.
Roger Ebert: "Was he the greatest Chicagoan? I cannot think of another. ... If you met him, he was your friend."
Henry Kisor: "More times than I can count I was the recipient of his extraordinary personal generosity. ... He was looking out for you, not himself."
Rick Kogan: "Studs sought the daydreams and 3 a.m. truths of many a person who never made a headline. They were all somebodies to him."
The last time I saw Studs was in 1995, in Los Angeles, where I was working at the LA Times. He'd come to town to promote his latest book of interviews, "Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who've Lived It," and he insisted I have lunch with him. We'd met years earlier in Chicago, through Algren.
Lunch, it turned out, was served in a private Times dining room. The editor in chief, Shelby Coffey III, was waiting for him and surely not expecting him to bring along an uninvited guest. A mere reporter at that.
Studs didn't care. What he cared about was that I'd been a friend of Algren's. And that's how he introduced me.
Of all the personally inscribed books by Studs that I have on my bookshelf, the inscription in "'The Good War': An Oral History of World War Two," which won a Pulitzer, pleases me the most.
Naturally.
Postscript: Best tribute to Studs that I've read.
PPS: Nov. 22 -- The New Press is to host a memorial celebration of the life and work of Studs Terkel on Sunday, Dec. 7th, at 4 p.m. in The Great Hall of Cooper Union (7 E. 7th St. at Third Avenue) in Manhattan. It is open to the public and free of charge.
Participants will include: Jimmy Breslin (author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist); Steve Earle and Allison Moorer (musicians); Laura Flanders (host of GritTV and RadioNation, and bestselling author); Sydney Lewis (Studs's longtime friend and collaborator); Victor Navasky (author, publisher emeritus of The Nation, and Director of the George Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia Journalism); Andre Schiffrin (founding director of The New Press and Studs's editor and publisher); Dan Terkell (son of the late Ida and Studs Terkel); Katrina vanden Heuvel (editor and publisher of The Nation); Gary Younge (columnist and feature writer for The Guardian); Howard Zinn (historian, activist, and prize-winning author of A People's History of the United States).
Sites to See
Abstract City
Air America Radio
AmericaBlog
American Leftist
Andante
Antiwar.com
ArkivMusic.com
Articulate
Arts & Letters Daily
because they are dead
Bill Reed
Blogcritics
Booknotes
Bright Lights Film Journal
Buck Fush
C-SPAN
Center for Cooperative Research
Clive James
Consortium News
Cost of War in Iraq
Council on Foreign Relations
Crooks and Liars
CUNY GRADUATE CENTER Public Programs
TheCuttingFloor
The Daily Howler
David E's Fablog
Dark Roasted Blend
Democracy Now!
Devil Ducky
Doug Ireland
Editor's Cut
Ehrensteinland
Eschaton
Henry Kisor
The Huffington Post
Inter Press Service News Agency
International Relations Center
Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Jacketmagazine
James Wolcott
Jan Herman (Literary) Archive
Krugman's Blog:
Conscience of a Liberal
Lannan Foundation
Life During Wartime
Low Culture
Metacritic
Museum of Television & Radio
Nat. Arts Journalism Program
National Security Archive
Noam Chomsky
NO!art
Onion Radio News
Open City
Open Library
The Overgrown Path
Political Irony
Postclassic Radio
Rain Taxi
The Raw Story
RealityStudio.org
The Reeler
Rhizome
Rwanda Project
Seeing Black
Studs Terkel
Summit Journal
TalkLeft
The Theater Times (Cris Gross)
The 3rd Page
ThugLit: Writing About Wrongs
Times Square Cam
The Tin Man
Truthdig
t r u t h o u t
Wading in the Velvet Sea
Walking Man
Wikigate
Wikipedia, free encyclopedia
Wm. Osborne & Abbie Conant
World O'Crap Man

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