Working Man, Studs Terkel

by Jonathan Messinger

LONG HAUL Terkel has a big story to tell.

At 95 he’s still a talker, still a writer and still the best combination of both of those—a raconteur. When I visit him in his Uptown home on a recent fall day to discuss his new memoir, Touch and Go, he receives me warmly despite feeling, in his words, “not well.” Sitting in a high-back chair, clad in his standard-Studs-issue checkered shirt but wrapped in a flannel bathrobe, he chats for nearly an hour, despite the obvious strain it causes him—evidenced by the wearisome coughing. When the photographer shows, Terkel mugs like a pro...

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