Touch and Go: A Memoir

by Studs Terkel

Book Overview

At nearly 95, Studs Terkel has written about everyone's life, it seems, but his own. He now offers a memoir which - embodying the spirit of the man himself - is youthful, vivacious and enormous fun.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1595580433
• ISBN13: 9781595580436
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A touch of the Reality Tree

Studs is a national treasure. That he's a great listener anyone who is familiar with his "Working," "Hard Times," "Race," etc. already knows. His story telling skills haven't diminished a bit as he approaches the century mark. The only thing that I found disappointing was that it ended so soon. I felt like I was paying a visit to a great friend & I had to leave too early. Still, any time spent with Studs is a treat. His observations, especially in some of the later chapters "And nobody laughed" and "Einstein and the rest of us" remind us that the madness that we're currently experiencing has roots that are both recent and back over half a century. His observations also, to the annoyance of many, refuse to be clouded by the hype from all quarters that we're constantly bombarded with. That Ronald Reagan and his administration's devastating policies still haven't been discovered by the very citizens whose lives have been (adversely) effected the most ("What's the matter with Kansas"), as we currently have presidential candidates falling all over themselves to "out Reagan" each other, don't cease to amaze. The selective amnesia that infests our society doesn't just border on the surreal, but has crossed the line with plenty to spare. If you frequently find yourself having that uneasy feeling as if you were stuck in a dreamscape conjured up by Salvador Dali during a fit of madness, or perhaps find yourself carrying one of those Bush Countdown Clocks around to remind yourself that maybe there will be a beginning to an end one day, then a strong dose of Studs might offer hope that reality might still exist.

Studs in Print

Fans of Studs Terkel will love this book. His radio voice leaps off the page: the same rhythms, the same w ay of telling a story. Readers who don't know Studs will be treated to an account of the twentieth century that is at once highly personal and local and at the same time universal in its subject matter. Highly recommended!

Mike's opinion:

I enjoyed the book. It brought back memories of times past, I love Chicago. While not as liberal as Studs, I appreciate his passion, kindness and thoughtfullness for those less fortunate. Studs has always been fun and so interesting. I always feel enriched, after reading his books.

An account of a life lived honestly and well

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. Ter

I love Studs

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,