Hard Times: An Oral History Of The Great Depression (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
Hard Times was first published in 1970 and contains interviews collected during the late 1960s. Over the span of several years, Terkel seems to have questioned anyone and everyone with whom he came into contact about their memories from the 1930s. He listened to and recorded the words of men and women who had been miners, union organizers, actors, politicians, social workers, farmers, migrant workers, stock brokers, preachers, prisoners, strippers, secretaries and bootleggers. He spoke to a wealthy white widow and to her immigrant maid; to the friends of Huey P. Long and to a former Pullman porter who would become the president of the Montgomery, Alabama chapter of the NAACP. He interviewed men who helped craft New Deal policy and men who fought against it. Finding himself waiting in a taxi, he interviewed the driver. One interview occurred at 3 o'clock in the morning with both Terkel and his interviewee well inebriated. If his subjects had children around, he interviewed the children, too; college-age and younger, they were born after the Depression, but Terkel wanted to know what kinds of stories these kids had heard about the Depression, what they thought of their parents' experiences and how they felt that time period related to their own (or did not). Terkel's energy for simply listening seems to have been boundless. His sense of history as lived experience constituting multiple perspectives is obvious.The great strength of Hard Times, and of oral history in general, is that it successfully represents the abundance of differing perspectives that comprise a time period. The book demonstrates that there exist as many points of view of the period as there are voices to speak them. And each one, rooted in actual human experience, bears validity. Each one supplies a unique outlook worth attending in order to even begin considering what we may learn from the Depression and how it relates to us now. No two stories are precisely alike. Some are worlds apart.Interestingly, as the interviewees in Hard Times exhibit, the very act of telling their stories, of remembering and narrativizing, seems to invite them to analyze and historicize their own experiences by measuring them up against those of others. In a literal sense, these men and women are creating history as they speak. History develops in the telling of life perhaps even more than it does in the living. Of course one pitfall of oral history lies in the subjectivity of this same intense historicizing. The stories told rely on the memories of human beings. Not only did Terkel ask these human beings to remember a time period over 30 years gone, but he asked them to talk about themselves. Naturally, the stories are emplotted the way these men and women have grown accustomed to thinking about their own lives, according to who they view as villains and heroes, what values they try to live by and what groups they identify with. The narratives represent what each individual wishes to remember about themselves, others and their country, which in turn represents how they wish to view themselves in their present.Terkel allowed these people to speak for themselves, whether they demonstrate by it empathy or bigotry, expansiveness or small-mindedness, miserliness or generosity, animosity or understanding. The reader cannot help having his or her own response to these personal histories, as Terkel must have had, but his primary motive seems to have been that of an archivist, or of that rare creature I mentioned at the outset of this essay: the historian who studies a period for itself. And yet, as his interviewees told their stories, they naturally related their past experiences to their present. Of course, presumably in the interest of allowing their narratives to flow, Terkel edited out nearly all of the questions he asked his subjects. Perhaps he led them in this direction more than the reader can know.Taken as a whole, the interviews in Hard Times render it problematic to make any one statement about the Depression, its causes, its effects, its characteristics or its meaning. Simultaneously, the obvious polyvalence of history allows anyone with an interest in doing so to uncover and perpetuate some viewpoint which will enlighten their present purpose (as displayed by the online articles I mentioned earlier). In order to feel any way about anything, we must choose a viewpoint from which to argue and find an opinion to support. We must make decisions about meaning and identity. And by performing this requisite act of choosing one viewpoint, we necessarily obscure others.However, in another lesson of history that seems to me echoed especially in today's polarizing political discourse, this act of choice can periodically become twisted - by autocrats, propagandists, the power-hungry, the unimaginative and the intolerant. To obscure other viewpoints can, in manipulative hands, lead to a rejection of the very existence and integrity of other viewpoints. To behave as though we have not made a decision about meaning, as though there is only one possible meaning to arrive at, is dishonest and dangerous. Terkel's work as an oral historian combats just such irresponsible and lazy uses of history. It reads like a portrait of the great and polyglot American family, replete with favorite cousins as well as embarrassing uncles. You may wish some of these people did not comprise your heritage, but if you are an American they do. And there is nothing for it but to read and acknowledge, sometimes agreeing, other times growing angry, first rejoicing and now crying, and to find some story to tell yourself about yourself, perhaps some perspectives that change your own and that resonate even now that so many of these men and women are dead.
One of the big, scary themes of this book is about the shortness of our memories, the narrowness of our perspectives. It's really kind of awful. This book was published in 1970, and Studs Terkel - American genius if there ever was one! - interviews two generations: older people who lived through the Great Depression in the 30s, and some of the Baby Boom 1968ers, who are, in 1970, in their prime, after all. Also, in classic Studs-style, he interviews a huge diversity of people: from the wealthy to the poor, from right-wing nuts to actual card-carrying Communists (they exist(ed)!), from mobsters to religious people to Cesar Chavez (!) and Dorothy Day (!). It's gigantic, mesmerizing. BIG INSPIRATION.And, again and again, Studs stresses the ways that this diversity equals a huge variance in what people think happened during the Great Depression. You read 100 pages of people starving - STARVING. LET ME EMPHASIZE THAT. I CANNOT EVEN FATHOM. 1930s America = developing country?! - anyway, 100 pages of people starving and scrounging and struggling in the South, in the Midwest and in California, and then you read a couple interviews with some real zingers who "never saw a bread line" and didn't think the Depression was that bad. Amazing. In terms of these people who live with dog-cones on their heads, my favorite might be the "PMA" (positive mental attitude) Big Business guy towards the end of the book. To quote him, "Rrrrrright!"Then there's the big generational shift, the Great Forgetting. Many of the younger interviewees don't know much about the Depression. It's really jarring: especially after you read about some insane occurrence that must surely be remembered FOREVER, at least in the place it happened, because it's just so insane (I'm thinking of the near-lynching of a judge issuing foreclosures in Le Mars, Iowa, or the struggles for labor rights in Michigan or even just the existence of Alf Landon (the fate of Mitt Romney?)). You read about these amazing events or people and then Studs will have an interview with a 30-year-old taxi driver who's never even HEARD of any of this stuff, and knows "Teddy" but not "Franklin" Roosevelt. My God! Think of everything we're forgetting?! (That said, hearing from the informed young college people (he finds some SDS types, including one guy who ended up joining the Weathermen!) is just as interesting, and jarring.)There are so many amazing stories in here; it's the human zoo, the most interesting spectacle of all. Highly recommended, especially if you're into US history or oral histories in general.
What do You think about Hard Times: An Oral History Of The Great Depression (2005)?
Years ago, I read a wonderful Studs Terkel book called The Good War. It was a collection of oral history stories from World War II, and ever since, I've wanted to read another of Terkel's works.Hard Times is also collection of oral history stories, this time dealing with the Great Depression. While there is definitely value in this work, I was a bit disappointed. The majority of the stories were political in nature, with Terkel constantly asking about the communists or the unions. I was more interested in hearing about the social and everyday life of people who lived during the great depression, and was looking for a non-fiction work more similar to Timothy Egan's excellent book The Worst Hard Time.There were a couple of interesting points that I took away from this book. First, that President Roosevelt saved capitalism in America because if it weren't for the New Deal, the communists would have risen to power. Second, that the New Deal was not in itself effective in saving the economy. Yes, there were testimonies of how those WPA jobs helped some individuals, but by and large, the consensus was that the New Deal stifled growth, and that the war helped boost the economy.
—Suzanne
An amazing book filled with voices of its time - both the years of the Depression AND 1969-1970, when Mr. Terkel did his interviews.In 1969-1970 I was a teenager and so my review reflects both the Depression and the late 1960's. First off, the number of people (who Terkel interviewed) who complained about the 'present time' (69-70), and waxed nostalgic for the 1920's and 30's? Amazing. Yes, amazing that in a time period, the 60's, when most the middle class people who wanted to work were working, when few in that group had to worry about their next meal (I never did and I was raised working-middle class), that there was this huge group of people complaining...About the young. About how if there is another Depression, (and many were certain there'd be one), it would be all anarchy and chaos. Also, amazing how many older people, survivors of the Depression, hated the government, hated the Democrats, hated Roosevelt. It is astonishing how many people, once they hit 40 and above, had nothing but contempt for: government, young people, anyone who is different than them. They also hated the rich, unless they were rich and then they hate the poor and anyone who's on welfare. They hate union workers, unless they are themselves one, and nobody works as hard or suffers as much or deserves more than them. This is an endless sort of tirade-from-the-old that is as eternal as society and civilization itself. (Didn't the elders gripe about the young back in the days of Socrates?)There are different voices, of course. Those who witnessed immense suffering and thanked the government for jobs, for assistance, etc. But I clearly remember my own grandfather having that same cantankerous 'voice.' He, who fed his family by working for the WPA, later blasted the Democrats and Roosevelt and staunchly voted Republican in his later years. What gives? Hey? I don't get it.So instead of taking away a picture of the Depression years from those who lived through it, I took away a series of oral interviews with a lot of cranky older people, who believed that only those who suffered - and suffered like themselves - are good people. And wow, the interviews with the rich? "Oh, no, we never saw breadlines. Oh no, beggars on the street? Truthfully, my father did all right in the 30's." How oblivious so many of the wealthy were and are to this day.Diatribe over. I am an older person myself now, but hopefully not so bad as to 'bad mouth' anyone under the age of forty. I read this oral history to get a better view of the Depression. I did. I will admit, I did. But I also got a better view of the narrow-minded and ill-natured older folk who I grew up with...I pray I never become one of them.
—Jaksen
Studs Terkel’s numerous works of oral history are of course incomparable in their ability to describe America. This is particularly so they are aimed at that particular point in the past which is distant enough to be unfamiliar, but whose society is not so different as to be totally alien – close enough to our own to shed light on the fundamental American collective consciousness that runs in a continuous vein from then to now, as people so similar to us face a crisis of far greater proportions than any that most living Americans can remember. Hard Times, his history of the Great Depression, is right in that sweet spot -- more so even than The Good War – and is if anything more relevant, as America continues to deal with the consequences of a more recent, lesser economic recession.
—Keith Schnell
