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America Comes of Middle Age: Columns 1950-1962
Book by Kempton, Murray
- GenresNonfiction
385 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
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February 10, 2010
The columns in this collection were written for the New York Post from 1950 into 1962. The vast majority of journalism ages faster than newsprint yellows. But Kempton, a half-century ago, sitting at his typewriter with his scraps of notes, with an eye for the truth, not the future, nonetheless managed to overthrow time’s corrosive powers. It’s a rare, rare gift to write journalism that stands as history and literature both. It is the gift Kempton had.
Kempton organized the columns in themes and there is a kind of momentum that comes as we move from sections devoted to lost lefties (Some Internal Exiles) to one where criminals, corrupt union leaders, and boxing villains (Circus Animals) gather, to a hodge-podge of social and economic and cultural topics (The Way We Live Now). Brilliant sentences abound: “He moved towards the majesty of the Presidency with a loser’s face, desperate to please, pretending to be bold when he was only daring to insinuate.” About the parent of a Miami high school senior whose complaint led to the removal of Brave New World and 1984 from the school’s reading list he wrote, “It is the essence of our educational system that whatever part of the institution is not run by the inmates is reserved for the parents of the inmates.”
The book reaches a sudden perfection with the 68 page section on the civil rights movement (Among School Children) and proceeds at a very high level through sections on things abroad (Powers—Foreign and Infernal), on political contests (Politicians—Seekers and Finders), on patriots true and false (The Patriots) and the book’s final section called The Name of the Game, a collection of prose poems of praise to a Republican senator who refuses to manage Joe McCarthy’s senate trial to a soft conclusion, to Louis Armstrong for his music and joy, to Coretta Scott King and family for forbearing while her husband fights injustice through civil disobedience, to Sal Maglie who, at age 40, pitched 8 innings in a World Series and gave up two meager runs to the powerful Yankees but was bested by Don Larsen’s perfect game, and to others who live and work or play with uncompromised integrity.
More brilliant sentences: when the Republicans win the White House, defeating Kempton’s great political hero Adlai Stevenson he is told that after 20 years they deserved to win. “What is this, Ebbetts Field?” he writes, “The Republicans haven’t deserved to win since Lincoln.” He describes a premature appearance of spring in Washington as “false and treacherous enough…to need all the protection of the Fifth Amendment.” About a self-impaled politician, he notes “whom the gods would destroy, they give ten minutes for a statement.” About the McCarthy era: “Only a liar could tell us the truth about ourselves, and only our enemies could show us the disease which was destroying our way of life.” Describing the contest between Maglie and Mantle that resulted in a home run, “’He’d been fouling off the outside pitches,’ he said later. ‘I thought I’d try him inside once.’ He stopped for a minute, naked and dry beside his locker, the skin showing through the thin hair above his forehead. ‘That shows what can happen when you’re thinking out there and the other guy isn’t.’ That was as close as he came to suggesting that God is too intolerant with the margin of error he assigns the very young.” About Willie Mays he wrote—and the man was not a sportswriter, “Willie Mays is universally regarded as one of the smartest baseball players alive, but he can be fooled; and that, I think, is the secret of his charm. He is unlikely to hit .345 when he is forty-one, because he will never lose the desire he had when he was twenty, and pitchers fool not his head but his desire.” About the children leading the way in Birmingham, Alabama, he writes, “It is perhaps too much to hope that any of us are as good as our children; we can only thank God that they are better.” In a column written in 1956 he wrote of the civil rights movement: “The story of the South is the most beautiful and most important story on earth today, because it is the frontier of an old, heroic American tradition. These are great people—great Americans—and they are the heritage, not of some race or other, but of all Americans.”
Kempton was a great American writer, with a thrilling prose style and a rare mind and heart. What Hemingway said of a contemporary is true of Kempton, no matter how many readers he has they never will be enough.
Kempton organized the columns in themes and there is a kind of momentum that comes as we move from sections devoted to lost lefties (Some Internal Exiles) to one where criminals, corrupt union leaders, and boxing villains (Circus Animals) gather, to a hodge-podge of social and economic and cultural topics (The Way We Live Now). Brilliant sentences abound: “He moved towards the majesty of the Presidency with a loser’s face, desperate to please, pretending to be bold when he was only daring to insinuate.” About the parent of a Miami high school senior whose complaint led to the removal of Brave New World and 1984 from the school’s reading list he wrote, “It is the essence of our educational system that whatever part of the institution is not run by the inmates is reserved for the parents of the inmates.”
The book reaches a sudden perfection with the 68 page section on the civil rights movement (Among School Children) and proceeds at a very high level through sections on things abroad (Powers—Foreign and Infernal), on political contests (Politicians—Seekers and Finders), on patriots true and false (The Patriots) and the book’s final section called The Name of the Game, a collection of prose poems of praise to a Republican senator who refuses to manage Joe McCarthy’s senate trial to a soft conclusion, to Louis Armstrong for his music and joy, to Coretta Scott King and family for forbearing while her husband fights injustice through civil disobedience, to Sal Maglie who, at age 40, pitched 8 innings in a World Series and gave up two meager runs to the powerful Yankees but was bested by Don Larsen’s perfect game, and to others who live and work or play with uncompromised integrity.
More brilliant sentences: when the Republicans win the White House, defeating Kempton’s great political hero Adlai Stevenson he is told that after 20 years they deserved to win. “What is this, Ebbetts Field?” he writes, “The Republicans haven’t deserved to win since Lincoln.” He describes a premature appearance of spring in Washington as “false and treacherous enough…to need all the protection of the Fifth Amendment.” About a self-impaled politician, he notes “whom the gods would destroy, they give ten minutes for a statement.” About the McCarthy era: “Only a liar could tell us the truth about ourselves, and only our enemies could show us the disease which was destroying our way of life.” Describing the contest between Maglie and Mantle that resulted in a home run, “’He’d been fouling off the outside pitches,’ he said later. ‘I thought I’d try him inside once.’ He stopped for a minute, naked and dry beside his locker, the skin showing through the thin hair above his forehead. ‘That shows what can happen when you’re thinking out there and the other guy isn’t.’ That was as close as he came to suggesting that God is too intolerant with the margin of error he assigns the very young.” About Willie Mays he wrote—and the man was not a sportswriter, “Willie Mays is universally regarded as one of the smartest baseball players alive, but he can be fooled; and that, I think, is the secret of his charm. He is unlikely to hit .345 when he is forty-one, because he will never lose the desire he had when he was twenty, and pitchers fool not his head but his desire.” About the children leading the way in Birmingham, Alabama, he writes, “It is perhaps too much to hope that any of us are as good as our children; we can only thank God that they are better.” In a column written in 1956 he wrote of the civil rights movement: “The story of the South is the most beautiful and most important story on earth today, because it is the frontier of an old, heroic American tradition. These are great people—great Americans—and they are the heritage, not of some race or other, but of all Americans.”
Kempton was a great American writer, with a thrilling prose style and a rare mind and heart. What Hemingway said of a contemporary is true of Kempton, no matter how many readers he has they never will be enough.
Displaying 1 of 1 review