From 1949 until his death in 1997, Murray Kempton was a distinct presence in New York City journalism. Peddling around town on a three-speed bicycle wearing a three-piece suit, he wrote about everything from politics to jazz to the Mafia. His writing was eloquent, his perspective unique, and his moral judgements driven by a profound sympathy for losers, dissenters and underdogs. His best-known work was written for the New York Post, New York Newsday, and later the New York Review of Books.
Kempton could find a good story in a criminal trial or a bureaucratic report, and he peppered his columns with references to history and literature to set stories in context. He enjoyed the respect of people as different as the conservative writer William F. Buckley and members of the Black Panther Party.
Going Around: Selected Journalism / Murray Kempton (Seven Stories Press, 2025), edited by Andrew Holter, brings Kempton’s work to old admirers and a new generation of readers. The book includes a biographical introduction by Holter and a foreword by Darryl Pinckney.
Holter is a writer and historian who has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Brooklyn Rail. He edited Going Around while he was completing his doctorate in history at Northwestern University. His dissertation explores the history of photography and American policing in the middle decades of the 20th century, especially the use of cameras by municipal "Red Squads" to monitor political dissent and social movements.
Robert Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University. He is the author of When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers (Cornell UP, 2025.)
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