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James Murray Kempton (December 16, 1917 – May 5, 1997) was an influential American journalist and social and political commentator. He won a National Book Award in 1974 (category, "Contemporary Affairs") for ''The Briar Patch: The People of the State of New York versus Lumumba Shakur, et al.''〔 ("National Book Awards – 1974" ). National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-09. There was a "Contemporary" or "Current" award category from 1972 to 1980.〕 Reprinted, 1997, with new subtitle ''The Trial of the Panther 21''.) He won a Pulitzer Prize (category, "Commentary") in 1985 "for witty and insightful reflection on public issues in 1984 and throughout a distinguished career." ==Biography== Kempton was born on December 16, 1917 in Baltimore, the son of Sally Ambler and James Branson Kempton, a stock broker. Kempton's father died of influenza shortly after his birth, leaving the family in financial straits. He worked as a copyboy for H. L. Mencken at the ''Baltimore Evening Sun''. He entered Johns Hopkins in 1935, where he was editor-in-chief of the ''Johns Hopkins News-Letter''. After his graduation in 1939, he worked for a short time as a labor organizer, then joined the staff of the ''New York Post'', earning a reputation for a quietly elegant prose style that featured long but rhythmic sentences, a flair for irony, and gentle, almost scholarly sarcasm. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and was stationed in New Guinea and the Philippines. He rejoined ''New York Post'' in 1949 as labor editor and later as a columnist. He also wrote for the NYC-based ''World-Telegram and Sun'' and a short-lived successor, the ''World Journal Tribune'', a merger between the ''Telegram'', the ''New York Herald-Tribune'', and the ''New York Journal American''. His 1955 book ''Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties'' was a farewell to his youthful Communism. During 1958 and '59 he spent a year in Rome on a scholarship of the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission. During the 1960s he edited ''The New Republic''. He returned to the ''New York Post'' yet again in 1977 after it was bought by Rupert Murdoch. In 1981, he became a columnist for ''Newsday'', the Long Island-based daily. Additionally, Kempton was also a regular contributor to ''The New York Review of Books'', ''Esquire'' magazine, CBS's ''Spectrum'' radio opinion series, and ''National Review'', the conservative magazine with whose editor, William F. Buckley, Jr., Kempton had enjoyed a longtime friendship that grew from their ideological rivalry. Known as a modest, courtly man who was generous with fellow journalists and friends, Kempton wasn't without his eccentricities. He never learned to drive, and could often be spotted riding a bicycle in New York City wearing a three-piece suit. He was shown that way in television spots promoting ''Newsday's'' New York edition, in which Kempton brought his bicycle to a stop at an intersection and deadpanned, "I guess I've been around so long that people think they ''have'' to like me." His bicycling was also depicted in a cartoon showing him standing next to his three-speed bicycle that accompanied first a 1993 profile in ''The New Yorker'' and, then, the jacket of what proved his final book, an anthology called ''Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events''. Kempton dedicated the book to Buckley, whom he once admitted had nagged him for years to assemble the collection: "For William F. Buckley, Jr., genius at friendships that surpass all understanding." An indefatigable journalist who filed four columns a week for most of his career, Kempton won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1985 while at ''Newsday''. Ten years later, he received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College. He was known for his rococo style, so much so that in his essay collection ''Hooking Up'' (2000), Tom Wolfe wrote that "Kempton used so many elegant British double and triple negatives, half the time you couldn't figure out what he was saying." Kempton, who was ill with pancreatic cancer, died of a heart attack in 1997, two years after the death of his second wife. He was 79 years old. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Murray Kempton」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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