Saturday, November 01, 2008

Studs Terkel, RIP.

















This sucks.

“I’ve met hundreds, no, I’ve met thousands of interesting people, and I’ve been so caught up with them and fascinated by them and intrigued with them, it’s almost like there’s no room inside me to be interested in my own feelings and thoughts,” he told an interviewer.

It may be the one time in his life that Mr. Terkel’s ruling passion failed him. “I don’t have to stay curious, I am curious, about all of it, all the time,” he once said. “ ‘Curiosity never killed this cat’ — that’s what I’d like as my epitaph.”


Studs was a prince. He never had an unkind word about anyone, save for maybe Christopher Hitchens, who, it will not surprise you, deserved it.

There's much that can and will be said about him, but Studs' death -- like Bellow's -- is jarring because he was, in a very real way, the last of Old Chicago.

"I'll keep going till I check out," he once told a reporter. "I've gotta keep goin', you know?"

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