Volume 44, Number 10 · June 12, 1997
On Murray Kempton (1917–1997)
By Elizabeth Hardwick
For some years Murray Kempton lived, as I do, on West 67th Street in Manhattan and so he was not only a friend but a neighbor. Every day of his adult life Murray wrote, since he was a practicing journalist with nightly deadlines to be met. When he was not at his desk, he was sure to be talking in a rather stately but never dominating manner. I sometimes met him when he was going off to work in the morning. There at the curb I never heard him speak of the weather even though in New York there is likely to be too much or too little of whatever mean is thought desirable. Instead, without preface, he would begin: 'I don't know what to make of Philip Larkin's unpleasant letters. All that stuff about wogs and blacks is just a pose, because clever people like to pretend to be worse than they are.' Or if he had his earphones on he might say: Perhaps there is something Nazi about Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's singing, but anyway God bless her.
Feature, 1115 words
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