OUT HERE

A veteran newspaper columnist reflects on decades in print journalism.

“My early newspaper career was somewhat hampered by the fact I had never taken a journalism class,” writes Hill in the book’s preface. Yet, between his first day of work with the Louisville Times and Courier-Journal in 1975 (a day when he met the city’s most famous resident, Muhammad Ali, by happenstance) and his last day as a journalist, more than 30 years later, he wrote more than 4,000 columns and 14 books; he was also awarded a lifetime achievement award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. In this collection of autobiographical vignettes and favorite columns, the author recalls stories that took him around the globe, from the World Ice Skating Championships in Czechoslovakia to a Southern Indiana nudist colony: “There is zero sex appeal in a swimming pool full of naked people,” he notes. Yet what makes this book stand out are its accounts of regional personalities. As someone born in the Midwest who attended college in Texas, Hill was initially an outsider in Kentucky—a status that he used to his advantage, as he played up his lack of knowledge to encourage locals to relate regional stories and lore. Kentucky, he points out over the course of this book, is not a monolithic state; the Appalachian Mountains of the east, he notes, possess a distinct culture that very different from Northern Kentucky, whose counties border Cincinnati along the Ohio River—and the biggest city, Louisville, has its own specific character. Most chapters feature celebrations of the state’s eccentricities, such as Kentucky Derby parties; a few, however, are very serious in nature, such as a recollection of Hill’s visit to a Ku Klux Klan rally in Harlan County in 1975. Although the author admits the book may “meander some,” it’s digressive in a way that recalls some of the South’s best storytellers, highlighting the quirky personalities, cultural oddities, and regional peculiarities that make the state unique.

Skillfully written narratives of Kentucky and beyond from an award-winning author.