Journalist Murray Kempton (Al Ravenna / World Telegram & Sun / Library of Congress)
In Myself Impromptus todayI start with the California impeachment elections, which went back on Tuesday, and now they may seem a little old? The pace of news and attention is staggering these days. We ended our withdrawal from Afghanistan two and a half weeks ago. I understand that many people are ready to "finish".
In any case, time is a subject of perpetual interest, beyond the capacity of a blog post (at least for me). In today's Impromptus, I have a variety of topics, for you to peruse. Do you know Bess Myerson? She was a household name in America. But today few would know her. I have revived this beautiful (and troubled) lady, to illustrate a point or two.
I don't know if you saw this essay by George F. Will - He is beautiful, interesting and wise. Talk about his career as a writer. And it begins with a quote from Ortega y Gasset: "To dominate the rebellious torrent of life, the wise man meditates, the poet shudders and the political hero builds the strength of his will."
But, Will says,
a journalist whose job it is to chronicle and comment on the torrent knows that it is not susceptible to being dominated. That's what it means to be a rebel. Furthermore, the enjoyment of life is inseparable from the surprises of life and, therefore, from its contingencies. Surprises and contingencies have propelled this columnist through a happy half century of arriving at his office each morning eager to continue with the pleasure of immersing himself in the torrent.
How about you and me? Is it so U.S pleased to be submerged in the torrent? Speaking for myself: it depends. Frankly, I like being in and out (the way some people talk about being "in the world but not in it").
Autobiographical waxing, which Will is not prone to doing, Will says:
In September 1958, four months after my 17th birthday, I left the Illinois desert to enroll at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Soon after, I did what a young man from central Illinois would naturally do: I took the train to New York City. Arriving in the splendor of Grand Central Terminal, I put a nickel through a New York tabloid to see what was going on in Gotham. This purchase of a New York Post It was an event that changed my life because in it I found a column by Murray Kempton.
That must have been something, for a mind and spirit like George Will: reading a Kempton column for the first time.
I don't remember what his subject was that day, but his subjects were generally of secondary importance to his style, reflecting his refined mind and penchant for underrated passion, scathingly expressed.
That's what WFB always said: that Kempton's themes, and even his views, were of secondary importance to his style. Will says Kempton exemplified "scathing elegance." So does he. Sharp elegance was also part of the WFB repertoire. One of his ways.
As I think about it, I have never heard WFB express greater admiration for a writer than Murray Kempton, certainly in the field of journalism. (I thought Evelyn Waugh was the "best prose stylist", as I think he put it, in the English language). WFB published Kempton at every opportunity, no matter what Kempton wanted to say. This did not sit well with people of more ideological orientation; but WFB was like that.
Murray Kempton, who was born in 1917, died in 1997. WFB wrote a long thank you about him, which I just read. Can't find it online, maybe better Googlers than me.
WFB began with the reaction of the New York media world. the Times "He observed his death on its cover with a photograph of the recognizable figure with his indispensable pipe." Inside, the newspaper "gave its readers a brilliant and moving one-page obituary." Newsday dedicated its cover to Kempton: TO Half a century of elegance and truth. At Daily NewsJim Dwyer called Kempton "the best journalist of the 20th century."
WFB ends its thanks with these words: "He was a great artist and a great friend."
I never read Murray Kempton. As far as I know, it wasn't in the national media, just the New York City media. All he knew was WFB's enthusiasm for him, which naturally caught his eye. And now I know that Kempton meant something to George Will too.
Anyway, enough of my Memory Lane. I like that an old name, Murray Kempton, has reappeared. Like Bess Myerson, in my column today. Was Kempton ever Miss America? No, but it can't be everything.
