Paul Hemphill
1936–2009
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
As a young man in Alabama, “Hemphill dreamed of playing baseball, but he washed out in the first days of spring training for the Graceville Oilers, a Class D Florida team,” said The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Instead, he ended up at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, which became Auburn University.” After graduating, he worked for various Atlanta papers and came to specialize in human-interest columns that earned him the nickname “the Jimmy Breslin of the South.” He left newspapers in 1970, after the publication of The Nashville Sound, about the country music scene. It sold 75,000 hardcover copies, but “none of his subsequent work did as well.”
Whatever the subject, said The Washington Post, Hemphill brought a “lyrical and sensitive” touch to “the world of the blue-collar South, showing a great knack for capturing its speech, sorrows, and pathos.” His 1979 novel Long Gone was a colorful yarn about a fictional minor league ball team called the Tampico Stogies; in The Ballad of Little River (2000), he told the true tale of “aimless, disillusioned white youths who went to prison for setting fire to a black church.” Perhaps his most heartfelt work was his 1993 memoir Leaving Birmingham, “which exposed his father’s racist leanings and showed little mercy for the city’s pieties.”
Hemphill, who died of cancer, is survived by his second wife and four children.
-
Did Alex Pretti’s killing open a GOP rift on guns?Talking Points Second Amendment groups push back on the White House narrative
-
The 8 best hospital dramas of all timethe week recommends From wartime period pieces to of-the-moment procedurals, audiences never tire of watching doctors and nurses do their lifesaving thing
-
‘Implementing strengthened provisions help advance aviation safety’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Bob Weir: The Grateful Dead guitarist who kept the hippie flameFeature The fan favorite died at 78
-
Brigitte Bardot: the bombshell who embodied the new FranceFeature The actress retired from cinema at 39, and later become known for animal rights activism and anti-Muslim bigotry
-
Joanna Trollope: novelist who had a No. 1 bestseller with The Rector’s WifeIn the Spotlight Trollope found fame with intelligent novels about the dramas and dilemmas of modern women
-
Frank Gehry: the architect who made buildings flow like waterFeature The revered building master died at the age of 96
-
R&B singer D’AngeloFeature A reclusive visionary who transformed the genre
-
Kiss guitarist Ace FrehleyFeature The rocker who shot fireworks from his guitar
-
Robert Redford: the Hollywood icon who founded the Sundance Film FestivalFeature Redford’s most lasting influence may have been as the man who ‘invigorated American independent cinema’ through Sundance
-
Patrick Hemingway: The Hemingway son who tended to his father’s legacyFeature He was comfortable in the shadow of his famous father, Ernest Hemingway
