Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith - Hardcover

9781565846920: Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith
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Studs Terkel has turned to the ultimate human experience, that of death and the possibility of life afterward. Death is the one experience we all share but cannot know. In Studs Terkel’s powerful new book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? a wide range of people address that final experience and its impact on the present in which we live. In talking about the ultimate and unknowable culmination of our lives, these people give voice to their deepest beliefs and hopes, reflecting on the lives they have led and what still lies before them. The result is a book that may well be Terkel’s most popular, a universal and deeply moving account of death and religion.

This is the first time Terkel addresses the whole realm of religious belief and of expectations of an afterlife, including reincarnation. Interviewing a fascinating variety of people, he is able to come up with an extraordinary range of experience and of belief, all of which prove far more complex than Terkel anticipated.

In the tradition of his books Working and Coming of Age, Studs Terkel addresses an issue bound up with all of our lives, yet rarely discussed on its own terms. From a Hiroshima survivor to an AIDS caseworker, from a death row parolee to a woman who emerged from a two-year coma, these interviewees find an eloquence and grace in dealing with a topic many of us have yet to discuss openly and freely.

Terkel also interviews the vast array of people who confront death in their everyday lives, whether as policemen, firemen, emergency health workers, doctors, or nurses. Many of the most moving interviews deal with AIDS, and how the disease has devastated whole communities and forced people to face death at the young ages we associate with centuries past.


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Review:
Mustering more spunk and battery juice than his overworked tape recorder, 88-year-old Studs Terkel cranks out another eclectic treasury of oral histories in Will the Circle Be Unbroken? This time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Good War takes on death, a universal experience that solicits plenty of speculation, caution, and emotion from his 60-plus interviewees. Regular folks--ranging from the deeply religious to the deeply atheistic--share their life stories and their hopes or suspicions about the afterlife. Some are well-known, such as author Kurt Vonnegut, radio journalist Ira Glass, and folksinger Doc Watson (who, incidentally, appears in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's classic bluegrass album Will the Circle Be Unbroken). Others, including parents, artists, medics, and clergymen, share equally compelling stories about losing family members, patients, and friends; personal encounters with heavenly voices; and apparitions. Terkel lies low throughout the book; his voice is only heard in the short intros to each speaker's story and in the chuckle-inducing introduction, which tells the story of an asthmatic boy--Studs, of course--who ironically outlives his family and dear wife Ida. The result is a vibrant tapestry of life's full process, sure to stir compassion and inspiration in adults at any point on the curve. --Liane Thomas
From the Inside Flap:
?IT?S THE UNGUARDED VOICES HE PRESENTS THAT STAY WITH YOU. . . . Terkel?s interviews may not allay fears about death. But reading them certainly encourages life while we have it.?
?The New York Times

Whether it?s Working or The Great War, the legendary oral histories of Studs Terkel have offered indispensable insights into all areas of American life. Now, at eighty-eight, the Pulitzer Prize winner creates his most important work on a subject few can comfortably discuss: death.

Here, in the voices of people both esteemed and unknown, are wise words, meaningful memories, and compassionate predictions about the experience of life?s end?and what may come after. A grad student explains how her two-year coma convinced her of the existence of reincarnation . . . A Hiroshima survivor reconciles her painful memories with the stoicism of her Japanese culture . . . Actress Uta Hagan expresses how her art is her religion and will be her legacy . . . Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler relives his World War II ordeal, after a torpedo left him in a lifeboat among injured and dying comrades . . . An AIDS counselor reveals why healthy gay men may require the most crucial psychological help . . . and a retired firefighter admits he ?never felt so alive? as when he was doing his dangerous job.

From the sheer physical facts to the emotional realities to spiritual speculations, all aspects of death are openly expressed in this wonderful work, the stirring culmination of Studs Terkel?s brilliant career.

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  • PublisherThe New Press
  • Publication date2001
  • ISBN 10 1565846923
  • ISBN 13 9781565846920
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages407
  • Rating

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9780345451200: Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

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