Studs Terkel, with Tony Parker

2
INTERVIEWING
Oral History Association, Oral History Evaluation Guidelines, revised 2000, (www.dick­
inson.edu/oha/pub_eg.htmll; Oral History Society/A. Ward, 'ls your oral history legal
and ethical?', (www.ohs.org.uk/ethicsl; Oral History Association of Australia, Guide­
lines of Ethical Practice, (www.ohaa.net.au/guidelines.html; National Oral History
Association of New Zealand (NOHANZ), Code of Ethical and Technical Practice,
(www.oralhistory.org.nz/Code.htm). See also V.R. Yow, 'Ethics and interpersonal
relationships in oral history research', Oral History Review, 1995, vol. 22, no. 1,
pp. 51-66; Yow, Recording Oral History, 2005, chapter 5; A. Lynch, 'The ethics of
interviewing', Canadian Oral History Association Journal, 1979, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 4-9;
L. Hall, 'Confidentially speaking: ethics in interviewing', in A. Green and M. Hutching
(eds), Remembering: Writing Oral History, Auckland: Auckland University Press,
2004, pp. 152-67.
I<. Brewster, 'Internet access to oral recordings: finding the issues', Alaska: University
of Fairbanks, 2000, (www.uaf.edu/library/oralhistory/brewsterl/l; M.A. Larson,
'Potential, potential, potential: the marriage of oral history and the world wide web',
The Journal of American History, 2001, pp. 596-603.
R. Perks and J. Robinson, '"The way we speak": web-based representations of
changing communities in England', Oral History, 2005, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 79-90.
W. Rickard, 'Oral history: "More dangerous than therapy?" Interviewees' reflections
on recording traumatic and taboo issues', Oral History, 1998, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 38-48;
D. Jones, 'Distressing histories and unhappy interviewing', Oral History, 1998, vol. 26,
no. 2, pp. 49-56.
E. Wiesel, One Generation After, New York: Simon & Shuster, 1970. L.L. Langer,
Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, New Haven: Yale University Press,
1991, is an essential text on the Holocaust and oral history. Also G. Rosenthal, The
Holocaust in Three Generations: Families of Victims and Perpetrators of the Nazi
Regime, London: Cassell, 1998; D. Laub, 'Bearing witness or the vicissitudes of
listening', in S. Felman and D. Laub (eds), Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in
Literature, Psychoanalysis and History, New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. 57-74; N:R.
White, 'Marking absences: Holocaust testimony and history', Oral History Association
of Australia Journal, 1994, no. 16, pp. 12-18; J.E. Young, Writing and Rewriting
the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation, Bloomington:
University of Indiana Press, 1990; H. Greenspan, On Listening to Holocaust Survivors:
Recounting and Life History, Westport, Conn., Praeger, 1998; G. Hartman (ed.),
Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory, Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell,
1994.
L. Passerini, 'Memory', History Workshop Journal, 1983, no. 15, p. 196. Also on how
'gaps, omissions and silences . . . play as important a role in identity formation as that
which is included, spoken, and discussed in rich detail', see N. Norquay, 'Identity and
forgetting', Oral History Review, 1999, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 1-21; l<.L. Nasstrom,
'Beginnings and endings: life stories and the periodization of the Civil Rights
Movement', Journal of American History, 1999, vol. 86, no. 2, pp. 700-711;
E.F. Xavier Ferreira, 'Oral history and the social identity of Brazilian women under
military rule', Oral History Review, 1997, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 1-33.
Chap t er 9
Studs Terkel, with Tony Parker
INTERVIEWING AN INTERVIEWER
I!
Studs Terkel, iconic US oral historian and broadcaster, the author of many best­
selling books, is here interviewed by Tony Parker, often described as Britain's own
'Studs', in an extract from Parker's oral biography, Studs Terkel: A Life in Words
(1997, pp. 163-170), published after Parker's death in 1996. With a century of
experience between them, two veterans of the tape-recorded interview reftect on
good technique: asking questions, establishing rapport, the importance of silences
and of listening. The style is discursive and vibrates with the shared enthusiasm of
unobtrusive and respectful listening. Copyright © 1997 HarperCollins. Reproduced
by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews,
London Wl 1 lJ N.
Y
OU' RE CO LUM BUS , Y OU' RE S ETTI NG out onto the unknown
sea. There are no maps, because no one's been there before. You're an
explorer, a discoverer. It's exciting- and its scary, it frightens you. It frightens the
person you're going to interview too. Remember that. Where in the radio inter­
view you start level in confidence, in knowing where you're going, in the one-to-one
interview you start level in the unconfidence, in not knowing where you're going.
There aren't any rules. You do it your own way. You experiment. You try this,
you try that. With one person one way's the best, with another person another.
Stay loose, stay flexible. Think about your lead-in, about whether it's going to be
into the person or into the subject. One I sometimes use is 'Tell me where I am,
and who I'm talking to.' That's quite a good one, because it lets me follow up.
When they've said where we are 'and you're talking to John Doe,' I say 'And who's
John Doe?' And if they start telling you, well then you're on your way.