Edgar Zodiag Friedenberg talks with Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel Imagine aside from Jack Paar,the one subject most discussed or perhaps not discussed by people, is is the young, the young man, the young woman, I won't use the phrase teenager for a moment for a very specific reason. Our guest this morning, Dr. Edgar Friedenberg, has written a most provocative book. It's more than provocative it's one, it provokes thought, perhaps quiet thought because now and then we have to think about what we call the silent generation or the beat generation or the bland generation, the young, the adolescent. The name of the book is The Vanishing Adolescent, and Dr. Friedenberg, who is, teaches social sciences and education at Brooklyn College.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel Why did you choose this title as the name of the book, The Vanishing Ad, do you believe the adolescent as we know him is, is vanishing?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, I'm not sure that he'll complete the task of course. I mean, I don't expect all people having the qualities that I would call adolescent to disappear, but certainly it is, it seems to me so difficult for a young person to support the hostility and rather consistent, though I think unplanned, repressiveness of modern society toward characteristic adolescent traits that I think fewer and fewer people, or a smaller and smaller proportion of people in the age range of puberty, do behave as, as I think adolescents characteristically do and in ways that give me satisfaction certainly.

Studs Terkel With the period, you use the phrase adolescence. Perhaps if we could pinpoint this first, this very delicate and razor sharp period of poignance. What as a period would you describe of adolescence and why, and we'll come back to the, what's happening to them in our treatment of them today.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Well it's easy enough of course to define organically and would say that it begins just before puberty. Actually you do find the emotional concomitance of it beginning before there is anything overtly physical, and continues, how long it continues I think depends very much on the person's experience and the culture he's in. But for most young Americans it's probably, you've had your shot at it, for better or for worse by the time you're 22 or so. Now the thing that distinguishes it I would say is that this is the time of life when, as a result of sexual maturation primarily, you do have, as you might say, enough push behind your emotions to really be capable of strong feelings and strong commitments to other people, to values, and capable of using this to define yourself, to find out who you really are, what you really feel.

Studs Terkel Now we're coming to the nub here, I think. This is the, we're going to use this as the catapult. A couple of things you said, capable of commitments.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel And feeling.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel The vanishing adolescent, is he vanishing because we ourselves are uncommitted, uncommitted today to things, uninvolved?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg To a great extent and because we are, as adults, often rather vigilant against the kinds of developments in adolescent people that would permit them to form the basis for commitment, the commitment frightens us. Now it's true certainly that there are other cultural forces that do what they can to counterbalance these. I should say that the Scholarship and Guidance Association people that I came here to work with are among

Studs Terkel I think we should point out, if I may, a parenthetical comment that you are here under the auspices of the Scholarship and Guidance Association, that's doing such an excellent job.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes I think so. And of course there are private resources for people who can afford them. I would consider for example that the, in general, the rise of psychoanalysis probably occurred because some people at least were aware of what was happening to them. But these are countervailing forces and the major cultural trends are, I think, disposed to greet sharp self definition at this time with great anxiety and with various kinds of diversions.

Studs Terkel See we're, you're touching on anxieties here. This has been called the Age of Anxiety in many forms, in a, in a musical composition and in writings, the Age of Anxiety. And here is this delicate period, this period of adolescence at a time when the adult to whom [the adolescent?] would look, himself, is so loaded with his anxieties. But again to this matter of noncommitment, uninvolvement with life and the adolescent is involved, is that it naturally?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg He naturally tends to be in adolescence as successful for him to the extent that he can be. I think we can do a little bit more with your reference. As a matter of fact, as I remember the coin as a phrase the Age of Anxiety were Mr. Auden and Mr. Isherwood, were they not? And they were concerned with precisely this social process, though not directly with adolescents but, oh yes I mean, certainly from the time of Mr. Huxley's Brave New World, this has been identified as a crucial problem of our time. There's nothing novel in my work about that, but I think what has not been recognized is that the adolescent has a natural tendency, though a fragile one, one that can be easily broken up, to place himself in the vanguard of personalization, if I might say so.

Studs Terkel And as he wants to step out, that is the adolescent, he, he, he is less restrained than his elder, is he? Is that the idea?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Well, restrained,

Studs Terkel Because I'm going to raise the point, I'm going to raise the point now you see that that bothers me personally, I imagine many. If the, what about today, you know we hear the phrase so often, we see it and we say it. The kids today, I'm not speaking now of the delinquent leather jacket kid, we'll come to him in a moment, because I think, think now of the bland, cool, uncommitted kid who we don't know his thoughts, we say in our day, you know as the angry young man said, there were causes, you know.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah.

Studs Terkel And he was passionate and spoke out. This kid is silent. He's bland. "I couldn't care less", the phrase, you know "that's the way the cookie crumbles", the phrase.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel What about, why? And, and what can be done? Why this? Why this attitude of this generation? You are a defender. Thank goodness, of, of

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Well in the first place, I regard the bland kind of kid whom you've just described as a casualty, although of course there have been a lot of casualties. I don't, I would distinguish between blandness and coolness and between blandness and silence and certainly, if you do in fact recognize that you are engaged in a relationship to an outer world which really does have some seriously hostile aspects, then you may be well advised to keep your own counsel. And some of the kids who play it cool I think are doing what I would want them to be doing but they are not bland. However, as to why this blandness occurs, I think it occurs because people today learn to look for responses of avoidance from other people as if these were things on which their whole life and future depended. And this happens before adolescence of course, it happens as a primary part of socialization for, oh, prepubescent youngsters in the school and by the time then you become an adolescent and have a certain amount of libido to draw on and getting where you're going, you're already caught up in conflict because you already know that the person who gets clobbered is the person that you would like to be. What is lacking is, I think, any experience in the culture of recognizing that one can survive a certain amount of hostility and disfavor and can survive more if one knows, after all, who one is and what one is doing and doesn't make unnecessary errors, which is why the playing it cool is something of a help.

Studs Terkel Playing it cool, you would differentiate from playing it safe.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Entirely.

Studs Terkel There

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Oh yes, playing it cool is a way to, of avoiding having to play it safe.

Studs Terkel You mentioned the matter, I suppose, you know it's very funny about playing, a friend of mine, I was disturbed but the kids are so, I was peeking out of a certain jazz place I entered, and in the early days, if I may just offer this and you take it from there, remember in my youth, says the grey head talking, when Dixieland was the fashion of the day, there was a reaction on the part of the audience that was some sort of exhuberance, you see. But on part when modern jazz was being played, there was sort of a silence. "But", says my friend, "you weren't listening. They are listening", he says, you know? And this is intriguing to me.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg I'm advisor to a jazz club at Brooklyn College which turned out to have one of its student members in my class who, after I had come to one of their meetings the next time he saw me in class, asked what kind of jazz I liked, and I had cut my teeth on Dixieland too, but had rather got away from it toward the Gerry Mulligan kind of thing. I told him, he looked very pleased and said "I told so-and-so", mentioning some of the other people in the club, "that you weren't a moldy fig". I didn't know really what a moldy fig was, so I hesitated to deny being one, I didn't want to mislead them. But it turned out that it was the issue you've raised.

Studs Terkel That's right. But this, I'm sure that, that jazz reflects the nature of jazz, modern jazz, in contrast to the more exuberant two beat music, yet more surfacey music.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah.

Studs Terkel I see that they are exploring coming back to

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg That's an excellent example and a very profound

Studs Terkel But coming back to the young again, I must admit to, did, do you remember a Nation article The Careful Young Men that appeared in the Nation?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg I hadn't seen

Studs Terkel And then there was an answer called Tension on the Campus. I'm coming to this because

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Good, I usually read the Nation

Studs Terkel But again, the idea of, several professors were asked to, teachers of literature, were asked to report as to their classes and they were all, without exception from Stegner to Shapiro, they were all disturbed.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah.

Studs Terkel I think Carlos Baker was the only one who wasn't disturbed. They all were disturbed and someone said, it was Stegner, says "I wish someone would holler and get up and shout at me or swear at me or do something".

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah.

Studs Terkel Now what about, I come to the silence again. You say this is not, is it just a complete shutting themselves off from the world today? It's not playing it safe you say, it's not a playing it safe.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg No.

Studs Terkel Because the man who steps out will get hurt. We've had this, you see.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg I know I think there are people for whom it is that. But there are lots of people for whom it isn't. And the ones that I think of as cool, it isn't that. But I don't think we can compare them to our ourselves. For one thing, the risks are greater than for them than any that we could have anticipated. I don't know whether the risks are greater than the risks that we actually could have run, but they're greater than we could have known we were running at the time.

Studs Terkel You mean the risks are greater because of the technological age we live in and what is happening you mean?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg In effect it amounts to that, yes, that is that there are fewer open channels, there's less that you can do just on your own. And there is, I think, more not quite cynicism but just a sort of skepticism about the significance of any individual intervention in anything anyway, so that our kids know better what they may be getting into. And then I think perhaps they have less faith in us than we

Studs Terkel Justifiably.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg And justifiably, than we had in our own parents, perhaps justifiably I'm not sure. Though I think that some faith in contemporary adults is justified. But I've noticed that the adolescents in my classes, once they begin to get an idea of, and accept the fact of my feeling for them, have a rather interesting reaction, I mean it's, on the whole they think it's delightful. They think it's nice for old people to have something to do and have a hobby and they're perfectly glad to be it, [laughing] as far as that's concerned, but they're there a little bit amused by it, sometimes touched I think, but after all it is old fashioned.

Studs Terkel But there is something there, there. Your whole approach is affirmative, I notice. You you have a feeling that out of this skepticism you say, not cynicism but skepticism, will come some sort of a credo, some sort of a, you feel this. Yes,

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, I think so.

Studs Terkel Perhaps the reason your students like you may be the reason why

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg They don't all like me, and that isn't quite what I mean.

Studs Terkel Oh no, but they get a kick out of you.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, I think so, many of them, yeah.

Studs Terkel Why, what I'm thinking about, why the young like Salinger so much? Why Salinger is, you know,

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel I think we can, we come now to

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel one of the heroes of our day, Holden Caulfield.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Certainly one of my mine.

Studs Terkel And mine. Now how would you describe Holden?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Well Holden, I would say, is exactly the kind of adolescent that I would, am most reassured by finding. I remember having dinner at the home of some friends of my sisters. I suppose I should describe them as friends of mine too, who are psychoanalysts married to each other, very nice people, very intelligent people. But I think highly in favor of normality, if not in the business of propagating it. [laughing] When I spoke well of Holden to them, the woman of the pair said, "Well but, but he's a schizoid boy". It's a marvelously characteristic answer. He may very well be, he had had enough to splitting. But I think it's also worth remembering that Salinger is not very optimistic about Holden's destiny. I mean at the end they do have him. He is being manipulated and cured and having his

Studs Terkel Trying to make him well-adjusted.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes. But it's the same process that H.G. Wells referred to so long ago in his novel about, I don't remember the name of it but the one man with eyes in the country of the blind. I know that the old proverb about how in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king turned out as well saw it to be exactly wrong. What they actually said was that this man behaves in an erratic and unpredictable and unreliable manner because of irritations emanating from these gelatinous orbs and once those are removed surgically we expect he'll be quite all right.

Studs Terkel Yeah, be like the others. This is the new. I love Holden and of course I know you do. I'm happy to know that you, we come, I think from Holden we naturally must come to the idea of this matter of adjustment, seeking to adjust. I know Robert Maynard Hutchins feels very strongly about this of course. He says adjustment is the, adjustment courses he describes as the, as one of the evils of our day.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah, well I think that that's, though, is confusing a symptom with an underlying cause. I don't believe anybody was ever adjusted by an adjustment course. [laughing]. There are other kinds of attacks that are more serious. What is dangerous is the value that leads to the adjustment course. And I think there's another distinction that we really have to make too. Otherwise I could be pretty silly going the other way. I certainly believe in the existence of psychopathology and of the value of therapy administered with the client's ends, and the clients functions as the determinant of the goals of therapy and certainly I think one would have to be a rather vicious sort of romantic, I think, to take delight in resonating to the acting out of sick adolescents, and their daring to do things that one wouldn't do oneself and for good reasons.

Studs Terkel Of course this is the work of the Scholarship and Guidance Association.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Exactly.

Studs Terkel I know I, in fact, I myself now may have a tendency to be a bit romantic about this, I confess to this slightly you know, but recognizing the horrors of course of the unhappiness.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes well I, I think it's much better to err on the side of romance. But there are disturbed people and some who would be disturbed by the most clinical, that is nonenvironmental criterion that you could devise and some of them are young.

Studs Terkel Your sister's friend, the psychoanalyst, describing Holden, her thumbnail description of this wonderful boy as schizo.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah. [striking

Studs Terkel Coming back to conflict, not coming back, continuing, you speak of the natural conflict sometimes in adolescence

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel that will make the mature adult. Would you mind telling us

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, at this period when one's own subjectivity is the thing that you have to work with when your own feelings are the material at hand, the problem at hand, that I think it does follow that you are going to get involved in little fights with the people around you and with society because after all, they have purposes of their own and the society is a complex place and it's trying to do things and you're going to be clumsy and get in the way and get on quite a few people nerves. Now what happens then is extremely important. This, I would say, is not only unavoidable, one wouldn't wish to avoid it. But I don't quite see why the response to it on the part of an adult has to be of fear or hatred. I don't think you can work with kids at all, probably not with anybody but certainly not with kids, unless you can get mad at people without disliking them. Certainly with my own students there are days when it seems to me that the whole classroom hour is wasted pretty well because everybody is rather out of patience with everybody else and nothing very constructive happened. This is, is necessary. This isn't the same thing as they're thinking I'm trying to trap them or my wondering whether I have to pull rank on them whether they're getting out of hand or something, you see.

Studs Terkel Thinking of the, again related to this, the, the conflict of adolescence, you speak in your work, if I may remind listeners of Dr. Friedenberg's book, The Vanishing Adolescent, introduction by David Riesman, did you work with Dr. Riesman?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg No.

Studs Terkel You didn't?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg I didn't. I do know him. I've known him for some years but I have never been one of his students even while I was at the University of Chicago, and I don't suppose that, well in fact it's simply the way it happened. It would not have occurred to me to tell him about the book except he happened to write me a couple of summers ago and ask what I was doing. I sent him the manuscript and when he liked it I asked him if he would write an introduction. He didn't know whether he would have time then or not and the thing simply turned up and I think a very thoughtful one.

Studs Terkel It is, it fits the book, The Vanishing Adolescent, and it's Beacon, Beacon Press. But there's something you say in the book here, again the matter of the conflict of the adolescent, you're differentiating from this phony toughening up process

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, I sure

Studs Terkel the, the athletic father

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel seeking to mold a kid, or the little league. There's a new, by the way, I wonder if this interests you, Hank Greenberg, the baseball player who's now a club owner spoke of, you've heard of the stage mother who pushes her children

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah

Studs Terkel Gypsy Rose Lee's mother

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes

Studs Terkel in Gypsy, Ethel Merman's role. Well now there's a baseball father

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Indeed.

Studs Terkel The little league is a new development on the American sports scene.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes

Studs Terkel Little leaguers of eight, ten, twelve, there's the baseball father

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah

Studs Terkel when, if his kid strikes out will humiliate him in front of others.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, yes its

Studs Terkel I'm wondering about, again, the conflicts of child and adolescence you're speaking about does not involve the, the father who will toughen up his kid and say growing pains, etc.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Absolutely not. No it seems to me that the people who do that have a real streak of sadism very often. And if, this is one of those places where psychoanalytic language is just better than any other alternative and particularly if you're on the air. I mean this is pseudo masculine aggression is the nicest thing you can call it. And there isn't really a very nice thing to call it when you stop to think what it means.

Studs Terkel After your talk yesterday on behalf of the Scholarship and Guidance Council, Ruth Dunbar, a very excellent education reporter of The Sun Times, has you quoted and the heading I notice is, the heading is written by an, a rewrite man, Educator Defends Beatniks and you're talking here but you, you are defending the kids who are questioning now. What about, this is a much overused phrase of course that's been, the dog has been beaten very often. But the beats, I'm just, are they involved see? There was a young actor on the show not too long ago, Donald Harron who played the lead in Look Back in Anger. His differentiation of the angry young man of England and the beat of America's angry young man is involved, the beat in America is not involved, you see.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Oh but I think there's a much more profound difference

Studs Terkel Please.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg than that, and a difference in the social structure. I get terribly troubled about the angry young men in England because it seems to me that they are attacking their friends and approaching their enemies with more hope than the situation warrants. And I think that perhaps the beatnik is a little bit closer to reality, except that of course the social realities are different. But the, those in England who can warrantably be called angry young man, of course that term has been thrown around to, of course support [untelligible]. But ordinarily people who are protesting against the unwarrantable closeness as they see it of the British social system, the establishment. They think that their adversaries are people in positions of power and that their own merits are not being given adequate scope. They're not being used enough and given enough opportunities because they didn't go to a public school, and after that Cambridge or failing that to the other place and so on. But I think that the situation here in America is almost exactly the opposite of that, without passing on the validity of their assessment of it in England, because here it seems to me that the adolescent at least, and the beatnik also, is likely, somewhat more likely, to find support and friends among such aristocracy as we have, such people as feel themselves secure and capable of some spontaneity, than they are among the middle class people who you may have noticed the phrase S.N. Behrman used in one of his articles about

Unidentified woman Beerbohm

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, Max Beerbohm, Beerbohm, in the New Yorker, I think the one three weeks ago.

Studs Terkel I didn't see it.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg This one refers to an Italian chauffeur who used to come for him always a little late. He was described as being partito ma non arrivato, he's left but he hasn't arrived yet [laughing] and Max Beerbohm observed that this was true of practically everybody he knew these days. But it isn't true of the people the angry young men think they're fighting and it is true of the people the beatniks think they're fighting and I think the beatniks are right.

Studs Terkel Are the beatniks, are they fightng? Now if we may, are they fighting, are they doing, you know, to use an active verb, are, I'm just, are they?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Oh, I really know very little about them. But I would say that it was a good holding defensive operation.

Studs Terkel Perhaps

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg But rather late in strategy to say that digging in wasn't a part of the war.

Studs Terkel But coming back to something you said earlier, perhaps this may explain it. Back you said earlier the chips, the blue chips are so many on the table what with mushroom clouds and everything you spoke of coolness digging in.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah.

Studs Terkel Perhaps this may be it. Again I speak the other side of the fence here. And the point you raise is thus far the most pertinent one I've heard. The digging in, perhaps the digging in to find something, you believe something affirmative?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes and to create something. And the thing that seems to be most unfortunate about such manifestations of beatniks as I've seen is that I think their despair is a little bit unfounded. I mean the odds are against them but they are still odds, they're not certainty. And sometimes people with feeling and passion and commitment, when you know even during Mr. Dulles's lifetime when it was difficult to find Scriptural quotations that had not been soiled by misuse, there was one that I always rather clung to that I think is apposite. This comes from somewhere in the Old Testament, I think it's Kings but I'm not quite certain. At any rate, it relates to the battle that Agag, who I think was something of an organization man, fought and the time afterward when he came to Jonathan, perhaps, I won't swear to that, to sue for peace. But the passage that I like goes "and Agag came unto him delicately" saying "surely the bitterness of death is past" and Jonathan replied "as thou hast made many women childless, so shall though, thy mother be childless among women" and hacked him to pieces. [laughling] You don't always have

Studs Terkel Well, of course [I wouldn't go to?] that involvement, but assuming that value is, we're coming to something else now, the nature of values.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah.

Studs Terkel But involvement, isn't it rather rough for all of us to live without passion and without involvement? Assuming that [intelligible] the matter of our values that the kids are challenging. I

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg mean Certainly

Studs Terkel I mean I'm bothered by the lack of involvement frankly.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah, well so am I when I see it. But it's just saying that it's rough, well

Studs Terkel Well shouldn't be something, we've got to be involved with something and perhaps this is, there's something you said, is it in the book or yesterday about, and this connected, a good child being made to adjust to a bad school. A good child, meaning the so-called, the offbeat child.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel So our values now, and you said something about being loyal to the human being rather than to the institution.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, yes I think that the kind of commitment that furthers growth is a feeling of love and sometimes of hatred. Though love is better but it's well to be able to distinguish between them and to recognize that you usually have both in some measure, for any object you feel strongly about anyhow. And these are quite different emotions from the kinds of institutionalized loyalties that can be connected to a school or even a country if it comes to that. As a matter of fact, Morgan Foster, whom we I suppose think of as among the most peaceful of old gentlemen as well as the greatest of British novelists, in his fairly recent book of essays with the delightful title to me of Two Cheers for Democracy has a passage, [laughing] "Two cheers are quite enough", he says, "only love, the beloved Republic deserves more". But he has a comment, two comments.

Studs Terkel "Love the beloved Republic"?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, "Love the beloved Republic which feeds upon freedom and lives". It's a quotation that he doesn't identify and I don't know what it's from.

Studs Terkel Beautiful.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg I've thought it might be Blake but I've never been able to run it down. But he has a comment in his, in the title essay in this which has always struck me as being a real chips are down comment in which he says in anybody's credo there must be something tough and hard and unyielding, and his belief in the value of human relationships is one of them, one such thing. And then he goes on to say "I hope I will never have to face such a devastating choice. But if I were forced to choose between betraying my friend and betraying my country I hope I would have the guts to betray my country".

Studs Terkel Certainly a courageous comment to make.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes.

Studs Terkel And this is the

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg A comment which he made, I believe, on an official broadcast for the British Broadcasting Corporation during World War II, which represents, I think, even more that a civilized state is rather careful not to present its citizens with this charge.

Studs Terkel Here is, here is the matter of values then, because there can be so much conflict, difference of opinion as to values when we speak of institutional values. The key value you're talking about through the book is the value involving, values involving human relations, individual to individual.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah.

Studs Terkel And what with so many gods one way or another having proved false, other gods, we speak now of the individual himself. This I imagine what all, practially all the young writers of any stature are striving for.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yeah, and individuals of course are not gods and therefore are not likely to prove wholly false or wholly true.

Studs Terkel And so what you seek, at least what you offer us it seems to me Dr. Friedenberg, is the, you're for commitment, for involvement, and where, where it's most important, between humans.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Yes, I certainly am. Though I don't think that is mine to offer.

Studs Terkel Oh,

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg It existed before. {laughing}

Studs Terkel What would be, I think we, we, we we've sort of had a pretty good touching of various bases. Is there one base we've missed, Dr. Friedenberg, that you'd care to talk about before we plug your book once more?

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg No, I think you've

Studs Terkel And I think what we've said, in a roundabout way, is what Dr. Friedenberg says too in his work, if I may mention it again, The Vanishing Adolescent. And no pat answers are given, they weren't offered this morning, nor are they in the book, but avenues for exploration are offered. That's as much as we can hope for any time. Thank you very, and I like the affirmation too that you express.

Dr. Edgar Friedenberg Well thank you

Studs Terkel In the days of so much negation, the word yes rather than no. Not that you're a yeasayer. Dr. Friedenberg and The Vanishing Adolescent, Beacon Press. Thank you very much and thanks too to the Scholarship Guidance Association for having allowed him to be our guest this morning.