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By Dennis Duggan |
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By Dennis Duggan From my desk in
Newsday’s Park Avenue office I can see Murray Kempton sitting under a cloud
of pipe smoke, his earphones on, typing out his 10,000th plus column by now
and as usual walking "wide of the cosmic," because for Kempton the
story starts in the streets before it ever gets to the Supreme Court. Those of us who have
had the great, good fortune to work alongside Kempton have grown accustomed
to his face, to his usual greeting, "hello, fellow worker," and to
his habit of trying out his stories on us. It is when he falls to our level
of hand-wringing and imploring whatever Gods supply columnists with stories
that we understand that even icons put their pants on one leg at a time. But it’s when his
columns appear that we appreciate being in the same room with him. People
often shake their heads and joke about Kempton’s baroque style but it is
almost always done with the good-natured acceptance we reserve for those who
have risen above the muck and often soar with the eagles. His columns seem to
defy the "worm of time," a favorite Kemptonian expression. He wrote in my book,
"For Dennis. friend of the friendless," a compliment I treasure. He
once wrote to me that I had saved him "from the ashbins of
history." I don’t have a clue what he means but I know that like many of
us who earn our living in the papers and who have been thrown over the side
from time to time, the ashbins are always there. "If this
pppppplace were a bbbbank," Homer Bigart remarked when a note posted on
the late and lamented Herald Tribune bulletin board carried the name of a In July of last year,
they rolled out the ashbins once more, this time at New York Newsday. Thank
God, Kempton survived, but the editors cut him back from four columns a week
to two and stuck him in the editorial pages. Kempton, of course, was unhappy
about this, just the way Cecil Fielder moped when Darryl Strawberry started
the first game of the post-season baseball series. Kempton believes that
"the more times you get to the plate, the more hits you get." Kempton is most at home
in the courtrooms where the courtroom guards, along with the judges and the
defense and prosecution lawyers regard him with a deference they give to few
of the rest of us. In his March, 1993 New Yorker profile "The Last
Gentleman," Pulitzer prize-winning author David Remnick recalls an oft
told Kempton story. It involved then Mayor Edward I. Koch who didn’t
appreciate Kempton’s assessment of him or his administration, to wit: He (Koch) "has
bullied the ill-fortuned and truckled to the fortuned," Kempton wrote
adding for good measure that "to walk in his wake has been to stumble
through a rubble of vulgarities and meanness of spirit." The friction between
Kempton and Koch came to a head one afternoon during a press conference at
City Hall. Kempton arrived late, and as he sat down, the chair beneath him
collapsed. "Here comes Murray
Kempton breaking my furniture!" Koch declaimed. But Kempton, emerging
from the wreckage responded, "it’s the people’s furniture, Mr.
Mayor." There is no other place
but in a Kempton column today that you will find mention of Bertolt Brecht,
Schubert’s "Lullaby," Stendhal or Bessie Smith. In one reminiscence
he chatted with Louis Armstrong on No one writes the way
Kempton does. No one even tries to imitate Kempton's style. There is a whole
generation of Breslin imitators and as Breslin says in his new book, "I
Want to Thank My Brain For Remembering Me," he gave work to a new
generation of Irish American reporters. Breslin has often said that "If
you don't blow your own horn. no one else will." But even Breslin, like
Kempton a Pulitzer prize winner, admires Kempton, and says that "He
brought honor to the city room." But he also brings
wonderment and insights that only come from being soaked in the brine of
passing time. You don’t ever really have a conversation with Kempton. You
wait for him to pause and try to insert something that is even remotely on a
par with what you have been hearing for the past few minutes. Think of a
harmonica being played with the Budapest String Quartet. Newsday columnist Paul
Colford recalls a typical encounter with Kempton with great relish, even
though it lasted long enough to cause him to worry about getting his own
column completed. "He talked about
the old, European monarchies," recalls Colford, "and about the
Dewey-Truman campaign of 1948. Then he mentioned Fats Waller and his music
and finally Rupert Murdoch." Colford says he was "enthralled"
by the conversation, an emotion that others similarly transfixed recall. The
word gentleman does come to mind when you think of Kempton. The word
"gentleman," comes to mind when you meet Kempton. He is a wiry man,
just under six feet tall whose slim build hasn’t changed in the fifteen or so
years that I have been working alongside him at New York Newsday and now at
Queens Newsday. It’s not that he doesn’t eat junk food -- I have seen him
strolling through the city room munching on the contents of a bag of potato
chips, his earphones clamped around his head and thoughts of his next column
swirling through his head. It’s just that his body’s genetics work more
efficiently than any Weight Watchers program. And while it is Breslin
who reminds his biographers that he invented the "gravedigger"
theory of journalism and that he has climbed more stairs than anyone in
history to get his stories, Kempton has quietly gone about his business
appearing on the scene and then quietly leaving it to the rest of us while he
composed his column. He told Remnick that "I need a scene, something to
look at. I’d rather die than try to write out of my head..." In a city where there
are too many thumbsuckers and pundits, it is reassuring to see Kempton biking
through traffic, ignoring the horn-blowing of exasperated motorists, his
pants cuff’s tied with a clamp, on his way to the courthouses or to City
Hall. One favorite story told about Kempton was his crack to another reporter
at the Jean Harris trial. "What do you think of her now’?" he was
asked. "Well, I was with
her for the first three shots." was his reply. On his 75th birthday
which was celebrated by his friends and colleagues, with champagne and a
string quartet, in the Newsday offices, a big basket of flowers arrived. They
had been sent by Carmen ("Snake") Persico’s wife since Carmen had
been exiled to jail for almost forever. He also got an American flag sent by
Senator Daniel Moynihan, himself an intellectual, but wise enough to recall
the streets in Hell’s Kitchen where his character was formed. "I’ve always taken
honor seriously," says Kempton, who also values good manners. He
graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1939, wrote political tracts for some
left-wing groups in But one has eluded him
and it gnaws at his soul. It is the Meyer Berger award, named for the New
York Times columnist and given by "The Pulitzer is
named for a publisher," said Kempton. "The Meyer Berger is named
for a reporter." |
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