Scott Calvert, of the Wall Street Journal
Scott Calvert grew up in a family of dentists. His uncle was a dentist. His maternal grandmother was the first oral hygienist west of the Dolomites. And he had so many dentist cousins that they had their own in-house Tooth Fairy. So it's only natural that Scott would grow up concerned about decay -- but not tooth decay. In his case he became intrigued with urban decay -- the metropolitan caries that beleaguer so many Mid-Atlantic landscapes today.
At the Wall Street Journal whenever there is talk of the Blight of Baltimore or Senescence of Schenectady the editors cry out: "Get Scott Calvert on the story, post haste!" And he obligingly heads to the city in question to root out the latest municipal scandal or chronicle another crime-riddled neighborhood.
His stories resonate with a fin de siecle nostalgia for the departed glory of great cities now gone to wrack and ruin. Hard boiled and cynical, he yet can give utterance to a yearning for simpler times and gentler people. But no one sees this softer side of Calvert when he is on the trail of a corrupt city poobah or exposing an adulterated fluoride scheme down at the water works. At such times he is a literary Javert, remorselessly running down the facts and figures of another sad example of urban rot and then writing it up with diamond-sharp prose.
His hobbies include vestibule watching, collecting antique wing nuts, and cultivating salmagundi in marble ramekins.
He has been awarded the Order of Saint Stephan of Hungary, the Heisman Trophy, and the Key to the City of Zanesville, Ohio. And he recently won a Wendell Wilkie Look-Alike contest.
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