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“And from there I go to Woody Guthrie doing ‘Tom Joad,’” Studs said, recalling how decades ago he used to put together a radio show called House of Wax. “In six minutes, two sides of a ten-inch record, Woody did, in his own poetic way, the whole story of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Incredible! Then I’d go [to] another thing. That’s the ethic. And the program would get letters. Not overwhelming. Some letters from a truck driver or two. Or a counterwoman. And so, to me, taste — taste is part of it, too. And I think people could be conditioned to good stuff.”
Terkel, who conceded to Koppel that he’s an “old lefty,” has been accused late in life of seeing the world too simply. I think there’s something fundamentally humble, antiabsolutist, and fine about the way he sees the world. It’s a world with no be-alls and end-alls, no people, causes, or ideas great enough to subsume us. Many things matter but all of them matter only so much. A lot of bits and pieces go into the making of a good life or a decent society, and the most anyone can hope to do is contribute. Nothing is any more than a part.
