Thursday, August 10, 2006

Appreciating David Patrick Columbia



One of the cool people we have met as a result of this blog is our favorite social chronicler, David Patrick Columbia. DPC, our Petronius, is a fascinating man -- hugely political, simultaneously cynical and idealistic, ferociously smart and, always, in the know. DPC has a lion's heart -- he is, in fact, a Leo -- and a wonderful sense of humor. In short, we rather like David Patrick Columbia so we are glad Choire Sicha wrote him up for the Transom. From the salmon-colored weekly:

"Last Thursday, David Patrick Columbia, 65 years old, went from Michael�s to Le Cirque to Swifty�s, and then on Friday, he was at Swifty�s again, for lunch. It was awful quiet in the restaurant, just a friend of Brooke Astor�s having lunch with a young woman, and then Robert Caravaggi, one of the owners, dressed in pincord, sat doing sums at a table. Everyone else was out of town, because they couldn�t take the heat. Mr. Columbia doesn�t even have air conditioning, once because he couldn�t afford it but now because it would take up too much of his window and block out the light.

"... On July 30, a Sunday, Mr. Columbia sat down in his sensibly hot apartment in front of his computer. He didn�t have a column for the next day yet, and so at 7 p.m. he started writing about the Astors. Six thousand words and not quite five hours later, he had written, from memory, without any reference, a pointed history of that family.


"...Sometimes people ask Mr. Columbia how he knows so much. He says: For chrissakes, it�s because I read sometimes! Does anyone read? Not in a world where the blogs describe any piece of writing of more than 1,500 words as 'long.'

The full article here.

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