By: Studs Terkel, Adam Cohen (Foreword by)

Paperback

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Studs Turkel records the voices of America. Men and women from every walk of life talk to him, telling him of their likes and dislikes, fears, problems, and happinesses on the job. Once again, Turkel has created a rich and unique document that is as simple as conversation, but as subtle and heartfelt as the meaning of our lives....

Studs Terkel is one of the under-rated heroes of American literature: his books are unlike those of any other writer, with the exception of the British Tony Parker. His approach is to take a topic so big that it resists easy interpretation, such as work, race, the American dream, or coming of age, and then to spend months or years interviewing hundreds of subjects to glean their thoughts and feelings about it. His work is distinguished from that of more conventional historians and sociologists because he allows his interviewees to speak for themselves, prefacing their words with a short description, and editing them for sense and narrative; what emerges are short passages in which people sum up everything about themselves and the topic under discussion with power and passion. The best pieces read like dramatic monologues by a latter-day Robert Browning, working in prose and having done the research of Henry Mayhew. This is not to say that Terkel himself is without polemic or purpose: thus, Working's Introduction claims that the book, 'being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence - to the spirit as well as to the body.' Certainly, the drudgery and soullessness which this implies are at times evident in the workers' descriptions of their lots. Phrases about robots, beasts of toil, and boredom appear across the class and income divides, from farmers to models and bankers. However, as individuals, and as such they emerge, Terkel's interviewees deny this bleak outlook: a Copy Boy tells him, 'I want to be a frontiersman of the spirit - where work is not a drag', questioning the ethic of work like the spirited hippy radical he is but in a way which would be both alien and comprehensible to the Fireman with whom Terkel's book concludes. 'I worked in a bank,' he declares. 'You know, it's just paper. It's not real. Nine to five and it's shit. You're looking at numbers. But I can look back and say, "I helped put out a fire. I helped save somebody." It shows I did something on this earth.' Books about work are rare and readable ones are rarer still: Terkel's achievement in producing this book is to have made a momentous, underwritten subject, as epic and fascinating as it should be. Most of us have to work, after all. (Kirkus UK)

Introduction
Preface I: Who Built the Pyramids?
Preface II: Who Spread the News
Preface III: The Mason
Working the Land
Communications
A Pecking Order
Did You Ever Hear the One about the Farmer's Daughter?
The Commercial
Cleaning Up
Watching
The Demon Lover
Appearance
Counting
Footwork
Just a Housewife
The Quiet Life
Brokers
Bureaucracy
Organizer
The Sporting Life
In Charge
Ma and Pa Courage
Reflections on Idleness and Retirement
The Age of Charlie Blossom
Cradle to the Grave
The Quiz Kid and the Carpenter
In Search of a Calling
Second Chance
Fathers and Sons
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9781565843424
ISBN-10: 1565843428
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 640
Published: 1st January 1997
Dimensions (cm): 21.0 x 14.0  x 4.0
Weight (kg): 0.699