Three days after Studs Terkel’s death, the New York Times published a column by critic Edward Rothstein titled “An Appraisal: He Gave Voice to Many, Among Them Himself.” The piece is a striking instance of the low art of red-baiting disguised as high-minded criticism. It has been effectively countered as such by, among others, Victor Navasky, Howard Zinn, Roger Ebert and Andre Schiffrin. Yet I have continued to brood about it. I am moved to write about it now not because Terkel needs further defense against such petty sniping but because Rothstein’s essay, so clearly intended to diminish his achievements, has the ironic effect of illuminating them.

It is inevitable that the tsunami of praise and affection—of love—released by news of Terkel’s death would prompt reaction. And it is of course appropriate for a critic to scale back the superlatives and inquire into the precise nature of his achievement. Such scrutiny is especially warranted in this case, because the legend that celebrates Studs also obscures him. He was sharper, edgier and more complicated than the statue that is hardening around him.

Studs Terkel and caretaker JR Millares. January 11, 2008

The following is an excerpt from a speech I gave on the occasion of receiving an award from Rape Victim Advocates in 2005. Studs Terkel presented the award. That gave me an opening to talk about him a bit. I quoted an invocation by Rev. William Sloan Coffin that Studs, in recent years, frequently included in his remarks on public occasions. Many words have been uttered about Studs in the last few days; many more will be spoken. It seems fitting on this day to recall these words that, at the end of his long life, spoke so deeply to him. - Jamie Kalven

In order to give an account of Studs’ influence on me, I have to excavate down to bedrock. For there is a sense in which I grew up inside his voice. The radio station that was his original and longtime home—WFMT—was always on in my parents’ house. It was the medium through which my brothers, my sister and I moved growing up. And Studs was on the air a lot in those days—at 10:00 am on weekday mornings, and then again on Sunday evening. For me as a child, the sound of his voice conjured the richness of the wide world beyond the household and carried the promise of how much of that richness a single sensibility could absorb without bursting. He was my World Wide Web. Together with my father, Studs dramatized for me the joys and possibilities of conversation. They planted the seeds of the conviction, now central to my understanding of both the First Amendment and my literary vocation, that there is nothing that cannot be talked about.