His first part was in the classic 1930s fellow-traveller play Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty

His first part was in the classic 1930s fellow-traveller play, Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty.John Kenneth Galbraith, interviewed here, says rightly that Terkel "is one of the great figures of our time." But his enemies on the right say he just replays old "left-wing Popular Front melodies." Terkel was 17 when Wall Street crashed in 1929; his parents were struggling immigrant Jews. Later, his name was given to the Un-American Activities Committee by someone in Hollywood. (Was it Odets himself, who did name names?)The Chicago Tribune wouldn't even put his radio programme in its listings Work faded away. His FBI file, reprinted here, shows nothing except the comment from a former teacher that "he was not the best type of boy." Terkel named no names. He made a joke of blackballing, according to a journalist friend, and just "played the clown."None of this can have been easy.

Hints of darkness ring the apparently happy life, like an inverted aureole. Parker observes how Terkel twists rubber bands around his wrist as he talks. When his beloved wife is ill in hospital, he weeps; but he tells Parker he could never say "that simple thing, `I love you'", even to her.Terkel's mother seems to have been a frightening figure, as she struggled to run a cheap hotel and keep the family's head above water. His life as an observer began when he was handing out keys in the lobby to salesmen and petty hoodlums. Terkel's only son, Paul, has changed his name to avoid any link with his father. He lives a life as isolated as his father's is gregarious."In a city with a population of three million people," another friend says, "Studs must know 2,999,999, and the only reason he doesn't know the other one is they've never happened to ride the same bus together." (Terkel doesn't drive.) If you were from out of town, in the old days, they took you to see the Chicago stockyards, but now "they take you to introduce you to Studs Terkel."At 84, Terkel still loves words, and lives by them.

This book is as close to the man as we are ever likely to get. Tony Parker describes it as "a profound salute" to one who has made living history out of American memories It is a salute, also, to Parker's deeply humane sympathies.. Pick of the week Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary Documentary film is a curiously neglected art - routinely underfunded, pushed out of schedules by TV franchises. Yet there's a case to be made that documentary, and not the plays of Dennis Potter, represent the true innovative soul of TV. Recent mainstream cinema successes like Hoop Dreams and Crumb seem to prove its enduring appeal, and innovations in camcorder technology allow it to cover new territories, as the BBC's superbly Reithian Video Nation proves.We can, reckon the editors of the exceptionally good Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (Faber, pounds 20), expect to see a new wave of film directors come forth from bedsits with nothing more than a Hi-8 camcorder. Just as the 1970s bred directors from commercials and the 1980s from pop promos, Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins predict that home-movies will breed the next Orson Welles.