THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509080436
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PATRICIA A. ELLER
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
COMING OF AGE
The Story of Our Century by Those Who've Live It
STUDS TERKEL
The New Press. 468 pp. $25.
A book by Studs Terkel is like the sour mash sippin' whiskey that the colorful journalist himself favors. It ages well and it goes down easy. But it's best savored a bit at a time.
A British journalist once described Terkel with a race-track analogy: ``Spencer Tracy out of John Dewey with Schnozzle Durante up.'' Those old idols are long gone, but the affable 83-year-old Terkel is still going strong.
His main achievements are a string of best sellers, including Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970) and ``The Good War'': An Oral History of World War II, which captured a Pulitzer Prize in 1985.
Terkel's latest book, Coming of Age, features a cross-section of older people, mostly in their 70s and 80s. Their life achievements vary; some are public figures. But their thinking remains unmuddled by age.
For those of conviction, the hard road was the only possible choice. They include the physician who alerted the public to the Atomic Energy Commission's deception about ``safe'' levels of radiation. The whistle blower lost his government contracts, but his insider knowledge helped fuel the anti-nuclear movement. Another who refused to take her setbacks lying down was a woman forced to retire at 65. She set about launching a nationwide movement, the Gray Panthers.
Then there was the spunky Nisei, interned during World War II, who overcame post-war antipathy to Japanese Americans and became an elementary school teacher in Seattle. In her high-performance classrooms she de-emphasized competition and promoted a cooperative work ethic. The White House ultimately awarded her a presidential Medal of Excellence.
The description of the woman's successful teaching methods reminded me of a recurring theme in ``The Good War.'' Americans whom Terkel interviewed for that book remembered with nostalgia how they traded competition for cooperation during World War II. The result was America's decisive victory over Japan.
That spirit of cooperation has degenerated into a dog-eat-dog world, as chronicled in other Terkel books about the post-war period. The resulting insecurity now affects people formerly insulated by privilege. For example, a retired law partner interviewed for Coming of Age lost a comfortable pension when his company folded after a failed merger. He sued, but the young judge who ruled against him ``said, in effect: `Those are the chances you take, Pops.' ''
There are, it seems, no guarantees in life. But most of the people in Terkel's latest book display resilience and spunk in meeting unexpected challenges. Even so, the author is saddened by his perception of a growing disregard of the elderly by the young. In Coming of Age he shares his experience of a daily bus ride to work in Chicago:
``I study the young faces. . . I am directly in their line of vision; they can't miss me. For a fleeting instant, ``. . . look down at me. I, with the unblinking stare of a baby, await their recognition of my being. . . Look, an old boy, a nut, a dirty old man, a retiree. . . a something. Not a flicker. . conversation. . . Eyeless eyes pass. . . through gray space and become. . . alive ly when]. . . they turn languorously toward one another.''
The extroverted Terkel might indeed be ``invisible'' to this yuppie couple, as he contends. Or they may simply reflect the deepening reluctance of people of all ages and temperaments to engage The Unknown Other in dangerous cities. Doubtless these young people have already learned the hard way that expansive strangers may only want to hit them up - or hit on them.
The point is, there are always two sides. And Studs Terkel, who once trained in the law, has typically listened better than most. Throughout an era marked by declining willingness to consider another's position, the author's books have presented the many voices of America.
In the end, as demonstrated repeatedly in Coming of Age, each of us comes down to the choice posited by psychologist Erik Erikson: generativity or despair. There is little doubt about the path traveled by most of the people in Terkel's book. In this age of rampant self-absorption, their selfless concern for those who follow uplifted me - and made me grieve that I never knew my own grandparents.
- MEMO: Patricia A. Eller is a business consultant and writer who lives in
Norfolk. by CNB