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

Terkel, Studs

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565846923 ISBN 13: 9781565846920

Publisher: The New Press, 2001

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Studs Terkel (1912–2008) was an award-winning author and radio broadcaster. He is the author of Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession; Division Street: America, Coming of Age: Growing Up in the Twentieth Century; Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times; “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II; Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do; The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century; American Dreams: Lost and Found; The Studs Terkel Interviews: Film and Theater; Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression; Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith; Giants of Jazz; Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times; And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey; Touch and Go: A Memoir; P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening; and Studs Terkel’s Chicago, all published by The New Press. He was a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and a recipient of a Presidential National Humanities Medal, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a George Polk Career Award, and the National Book Critics Circle 2003 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.

Reviews

In the past, Terkel (The Good War) has gotten people to talk about their concrete experiences, like family, war and the Depression, rather than an event that no one can talk about after having experienced it. Now Terkel, a gifted interviewer, encourages the subjects of this book to talk openly about their feelings regarding life's final frontier. The raconteurs who share their moving stories in this collection range from emergency room doctors and paramedics to public figures such as Kurt Vonnegut, NPR commentator Ira Glass and country music guitarist Doc Watson. Each of Terkel's subjects brings his or her unique insights to the mystery of death. For example, emergency room doctor Ed Reardon says we fear death because we don't understand it, and that it's hope that keeps us going while we're alive. Country woman Peggy Terry observes that death would not be so frightening if "we've fulfilled ourselves as human beings, not as collectors of stuff, money, and bank accounts." Tico Valle, a young Latino gay male, reflects on the death of his partner and the significance of reincarnation for understanding the meaning of life. Finally, Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Mobley, poignantly recalls her son's sacrifice: "Emmett had died that men might have freedom here on Earth. That we might have a right to life.... If Jesus Christ died for our sins, Emmett Till bore our prejudices." Terkel's refusal to overwhelm readers with his own philosophical reflections and his willingness to allow ordinary men and women to speak for themselves make this a stirring and enlightening collection that will lead readers to think more deeply about their own hopes and fears. (Oct.)Forecast: This is bound to be another bestseller for Terkel, who will tour five cities to promote it. First serial was sold to the Atlantic Monthly.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* Thirty years ago, when Gore Vidal suggested he write about death, Terkel demurred: "It was too big for me; too abstract . . . more in the domain of the metaphysician or the minister." But in a new century, having lived through a quintuple bypass and the 1999 death of his beloved wife, Ida, Terkel takes on this subject in his usual inclusive manner. There are a handful of famous names here--entertainers (Doc Watson, William Warfield, Uta Hagen), writers (Kurt Vonnegut, Vine Deloria), and activists (Rev. Willie T. Barrow, Father Len Dubi, Rabbi Robert Marx)--and names Terkel fans will recognize from previous works, such as Peggy Terry, Hank Oettinger, and Kid Pharaoh. A few individuals have unique relationships with death, for example, a Hiroshima survivor and a former death-row inmate. But most of Terkel's conversations are with "folks": doctors and nurses, firemen and police officers, teachers and church workers, and fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. Circle is a different book than it would have been 30 years ago because of AIDS, which casts its shadow over a number of stories. Many of Terkel's subjects describe themselves as "spiritual, not religious"; a number believe they've had contact with deceased friends or relatives; and "invariably, those who have a faith . . . have an easier time with loss." An involving celebration of life and exploration of death. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Terkel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a dozen books on American life (most recently The Spectator), writes in the introduction about his own encounters with death narrowly avoided first as an asthmatic child seeking help in falling asleep and then as an adult undergoing quintuple bypass surgery. He also describes the deaths of his father and, more recently, his 87-year-old wife. Like his previous books, this current volume collects interviews with a variety of people on a particular theme. Here he speaks with "sixty heroes . . . offering me their bone-deep, honest testimonies [which] have been a palliative beyond prescription." Terkel rightly claims that the book deals with "death, of course, but understood only by living to the full its long prelude, life." His heroes include medical personnel, strangers, parents, clergy, journalists, performers, and others, some well known, such as NPR's Ira Glass, author Kurt Vonnegut, and country singer Doc Watson, and some less familiar. Together they offer a wide spectrum of reflections on death and life. Highly recommended for public and seminary libraries. [See p. 210 for an interview with Terkel. Ed.] Carolyn M. Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmville, V.
- Carolyn M. Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmville, VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1565846923
• ISBN 13: 9781565846920
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 407