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Spliced between such scenes, in no chronological sequence, are vignettes drawn from breadlines in the '30s and civil rights marches in the '60s, from on-the-road problems of black musicians in the '40s and off-the-air problems of blacklisted performers in the '50s. Terkel's range as a historian is determined by the range of what he saw and heard —a limitation in other reporters, perhaps, but a vast license in Terkel's case. He was in Chicago when Dillinger was shot and in Selma in 1965. He has also elicited conversation from just about every notable from Bertrand Russell to Mahalia Jackson—and he is still at his listening post at Chicago's WFMT.
Indefatigable Romantic. Terkel's prime failing is his unwillingness to contradict—or entertain a critical thought —about anyone who was nice enough to spend time with him. He listens rhapsodically as British Director Joan Littlewood says, "I'm sick to death of all these silly old political and social and educational systems which have got in the way of human expression." Not a word from Terkel, wondering whether those systems are not perhaps products of human expression. On the evidence of Talking to Myself, Terkel has rarely sought out people who actually run things. An indefatigable romantic, he prefers the "mute, inglorious Miltons" among the underdogs: the Welsh miner with a taste for the impressionists, the Cockney waitress with a Bruegel print on her wall, the Swedish miner who quotes Gibbon. Terkel is moved by what he takes to be the oppression of such people. As he presents them, though, they seem to be doing very nicely indeed.
Yet Terkel goes a long way to ward correcting the sociological imbalance between charts and characters.
The latter have always consumed him.
The law degree he earned from the Uni versity of Chicago never displaced his curiosity about people — or made him a dollar. In retrospect, Terkel's decision not to practice law looks inspired.
He might have made a passable attorney; he has proven an entertaining and invaluable witness.