That's always the question, isn't it? For better or worse, what you do is your primary way of connecting with people. If home is refuge, work is prospect and you need both to thrive.
From 1992 until 2005, this was an easy question for me to answer. I said I was a bookseller. Now it's a bit more complicated, since I work as a writer, editor, bookseller or teacher, depending upon the day and the hour and my mood. Other answers I've given over the years include student, marble mill worker, grocery store clerk, prep cook and route sales rep.
Always and everywhere, however, I've been a member, born and bred, of the working class. And Jenny Brown's great article (Shelf Awareness, December 9, 2008) on the recent tribute to Studs Terkel in the Great Hall of Cooper Union got me thinking.
Did anybody understand work better than Studs? That question--"What do you do?"--when asked by him was a measure of his fascination rather than a statement of competitiveness or elitism.
Ah, that word again--elitism.
I've been reading Studs Terkel since the late 1960s, which means throughout my working life. No matter what kind of good or lousy job I had, his writing, along with the brilliant growl I heard on radio and TV, always spoke to me, had my back, nudged me in the ribs sometimes, reminding me to take the world very seriously but myself less so.
He was a master at connecting the barely visible threads that hold us together.
In 2004, while I was attending BookExpo America in Chicago, I finally met Studs . . . at Bill Ayers' house.
Maybe I should explain.
A reader's life, like a worker's life, is irresistibly complicated on the good days. That year I was invited to one of those publisher-sponsored dinners that are the social staple of book shows. This one happened to be at the Hyde Park home of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, names that have been mentioned, you may recall, once or twice during this year's presidential campaign.
Oh, and how about another plot twist here for readers who love it when incontrovertible evidence seems like deus ex machina? I first met Bill in 2001 while we were at Bennington College--in our energetic dotage--working toward MFA in Writing degrees and "palling around." As recently as last winter, we had dinner together in Bennington and talked about . . . stuff. For two people who couldn’t have lived more disparate lives when we were
young, our friendship has evolved quite naturally, an outgrowth, perhaps,
of something Bill suggested in a recent New York Times Op-ed piece, when he wrote that "talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue."
But let's get back to our story. On that night in 2004, in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, in Bill's living room, Studs Terkel held court on a sofa, looking at once frail and indomitable. This simple gem of a moment is my cherished memory of the man at work and play.
As a bookseller, I love it when I'm handselling novels, but also take a certain pleasure in the awareness of my fingers dancing instinctively across a keyboard, ringing up purchases during a rush. After all, if I add up the number of years I've spent in retail as a grocer and bookseller, calling myself a cashier might be the more honest response to the seminal question.
When I was 17 and working for the A&P, customers lined up at my register because I was fast and proud of it. One of my favorite stories from Working is of Babe Secoli, the supermarket checker who says, "It's hard work, but I like it. This is my life. . . . I'm just movin'--the hips, the hand, and the register, the hips, the hand, and the register . . . You just keep goin', one, two, one, two. If you've got that rhythm, you're a fast checker. Your feet are flat on the floor and you're turning your head back and forth. . . . If somebody interrupts to ask me the price, I'll answer while I'm movin'. Like playin' a piano."
So, what do I do?
I work.
And I agree with Studs about doing something you love. Of his own vocation, he wrote, "Though my weekends go by soon enough, I look toward Monday without a sigh."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)