Studs Terkel, who made his name listening to ordinary folks talk about their ordinary lives -- and who turned that knack for conversation into a much-honored literary career -- died Friday. He was 96. Terkel died of old age at his home in Chicago, his son Dan said. “He lived a long, eventful, satisfying, though sometimes tempestuous life," Dan Terkell said. “I think that pretty well sums it up."
The author of blockbuster oral histories on World War II, the Great Depression and contemporary attitudes toward work, Terkel roamed the country engaging an astounding cross-section of Americans in tape-recorded chats -- about their dreams, their fears, their chewing gum, about racism, courage, dirty floors and the Beatles.
With his loud laugh and raspy voice, plus his inept fumbles with his tape recorder, he set his subjects at ease and tugged from them memories, predictions and simple truths about their everyday existence. Terkel transcribed and edited the interviews, then compiled them into books that were at once intimate and sweeping, among them “Division Street," “Hard Times," “Working," and “The Good War," which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
Terkel was also a legendary radio personality, hosting a daily music and interview show on Chicago's WFMT for 45 years.
He never prepared his questions. He interrupted his guests often. Yet Terkel was known as a master interviewer, able to establish an easy rapport with just about anyone. His secret, he once said, was simple: “It's listening."
And listen he did: to sultry jazz singers and insecure housewives; to a repentant Ku Klux Klan leader; to Bob Dylan, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Marlene Dietrich, Bertrand Russell; to a parking lot attendant and a lesbian grandmother; to a piano tuner; and to a barber.
As the late CBS newsman Charles Kuralt once said: “When Studs Terkel listens, everybody talks."
Reviewers called Terkel's oral histories accessible, powerful and deeply moving. “Readers will experience emotions they didn't know they had," the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote of his World War II book. Though they were lengthy -- some more than 600 pages -- most of Terkel's books shot straight to the bestseller list and much of his work was translated for publication abroad. 
“I think he was the most extraordinary social observer this country has produced," said Dr. Robert Coles, a Harvard professor of psychiatry who considered Terkel a friend and inspiration. Though Terkel did interview the rich and famous, “he recognized the need to pay attention to the poor, the vulnerable, the ordinary people," Coles said. “I pray for the day when American universities will understand that Studs Terkel is worth many departments of sociology. He's an institution in himself."
It's not that Chicago is that great. In fact, it's horrible. But living here is like being married to a woman with a broken nose. There may be lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real.
Studs Trekel
Real was what Terkel always wanted to get at: real people, real lives and real emotions.
