Going Around

“Murray Kempton wrote stately, measured prose in the tradition of Gibbon and Macauley, and within hours of publication it was used to wrap fish. He was also one of the great moral witnesses of his time, there on the sidewalk for 60-odd years, bringing his gimlet eye and sense of justice and solidarity--formed by his Episcopalian-bishop forebears and the IWW--to bear through the darkest and most hopeful times of the late twentieth century. I'm very happy there is at last a representative selection of his work, with a moving introductory portrait by Darryl Pinckney to put flesh on the bones.”

– Lucy Sante, author of I Heard Her Call My Name

“When and if the dust finally settles on the American Century, Murray Kempton will prove to have been one of its greatest writers: almost miraculously immersed in every region, profession, political movement, and social class, he leaves behind a body of work whose range (seven decades!) and moral ambition seem nothing short of majestic. This new anthology rescues him from a pile of clippings and lets his voice ring out even more clearly than it did during his life.”

– Benjamin Moser, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Biography

“This is a vital collection for all who remain committed to journalism as an art form. Just as splendidly as it did decades ago, Kempton's writing reminds us of all this medium can and must continue to do.”

– Osita Nwanevu, contributing editor at The New Republic and columnist at The Guardian

“Murray Kempton is a reference point for an entire era of American journalism. Erudite, slyly comic and consistently elegant, his work chronicled the high, the low and the salient points in between. Going Around is a compendium of the scribe at his finest—an illustration of how the adjective 'Kemptonian' came to be synonymous with high praise.”

– Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

“All we journalists were in awe of Murray, not simply because he knew more than we did, but because he could do more with what he knew.”

– Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettysburg

“Throughout his career, the Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist and reporter Kempton (1917-1997) stood out among journalists. His approach was critical, and he was, writes editor Holter, “for the downtrodden, instinctively.” Of the guerrillas in 1980s El Salvador, Kempton wrote, “There aren’t all that many human creatures more attractive than some revolutionaries can be, at least until they win.” As regards police violence against civil rights activists: “It is, of course, law and order when everyone who hits anyone else is wearing a uniform.” What mattered to him lay deeper. The Civil Rights March on Washington represented “an acceptance of the revolutionaries into the American establishment” that embodied the white hope “that the Negro revolt will stop where it is.” Holter, an independent historical researcher, has gathered nearly 90 articles and editorials “from every period in Kempton’s career.” Many are outstanding. The first is Kempton’s 1936 defense of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the last outlines his instructions for his funeral. Kempton’s subjects range from labor unions and his FBI file to notables such as A. Philip Randolph, Dwight Eisenhower, and J. Robert Oppenheimer; cultural figures such as the blues singer Bessie Smith; and the less famous such as Odell Waller, a 1940s black sharecropper who shot his white landlord during a dispute. A voice for the times, he wrote with a grace seldom encountered today. Of the conservative William F. Buckley, he said: “I did not want him to fail, except in the superficial sense of dying an old man without ever seeing the kind of America he thinks he wants.” Describing the future president, in 1989, he concluded: “We are assured that God does not make trash, which thought disposes of the impression that Donald Trump is not altogether a self-made man.” Reading Kempton reminds us that, no matter the chaos, justice and human dignity are within our reach.”

– Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)