i've just come from Salon.com and Andrew O'Hehir's delightful interview with Studs Terkel. Terkel, at 91, has written yet another book to give us all hope. literally, hope. the title is Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times. O'Hehir says:
Ostensibly, "Hope Dies Last" is a book about dedicated
political activists, the "prophetic minority" who Terkel
says are capable of imbuing their society with hope and
moving it, ever so slowly and gradually, in the direction
of justice and decency. It also feels like a summing-up,
a tour of Terkel's great preoccupations: the labor movement,
race, economic injustice, the generations who emerged
from the great turmoils of the '40s and the '60s. It's full
of inspirational tales - Terkel is never ashamed of his agenda,
and he's trying to convince his readers that social change is
still possible - but it is never saccharine.
Terkel himself says "It's my tribute to what I call the 'prophetic minority,' those who've been activists since the Year One." He also throws in a funny comment about his writing style: "I work very improvisationally, in a jazz kind of way." You gotta love a guy who can say that.
read the interview, let's find the book. Hope is the thing with feathers (or so says Emily Dickinson) that's just about flown out of my soul lately. anything that offers help in restoring its nest sounds good to me.
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