If you don’t recognize that name, or that of his blog, “The Rittenhouse Review”, you probably weren’t reading much in the liberal blogosphere back toward the beginning, around 2002.

James Capozzola was one of the giants then, a blogger whom everybody read and linked to.

Jim helped to establish the tone of the liberal blogosphere, and an approach to what would be its substance. He offered help to a dizzying number of bloggers who followed him. That reading any blog worth the time meant being invited, by links, to become acquainted with what other worthies were thinking and writing about was one of the many of Jim’s contribution to the tenor of what would become the netroots. T.Bogg, Skippy, Julia, and Susie Madrak were only a few of the bloggers Jim encouraged, taught, and even shaped.

I can still remember the shock of nonrecognition I experienced when I first read my own name, with a link, in one of his posts. I wasn’t even a blogger, only a sometime commentator at Eschaton in the days when the comments threads rarely went over a manageable 125 or so, and were so well written and argued that it took me some time before I got up the courage to leave one myself. For a moment I actually thought, “how odd, someone else named Leah A has a post so similar to that comment I left on that post by Atrios.

In those days I was too shy to send Jim an email to thank him, or perhaps I was too intimidated by his extraordinary skill as a writer. Have I mentioned that?

James Capozzola could have been writing for The New Yorker. And should have been.

Witty, stylish, with an eye for the telling detail, able to make any aspect of living in his city of choice, Philly, or any aspect of his personal enthusiasms for books, magazines, art, theatre, music, for “culture” in all its many meanings, a subject worthy of his comment, James was also wickedly funny, laugh-out-loud-funny.

Susie made the shocking announcement of Jim’s death and you need to read her moving tribute. Susie is also keeping track of what others of us who were Jim’s regular readers are saying today, to remember Jim, and try and find some comfort in the body of work he left in the pages of The Review. Go and see how many of our best were influenced by him.

In recent years, Jim was less of a presence on the net, mostly because of life-struggles, loss of a job, loss of his health insurance, and chronic illness that was, well, chronic.

Julia, who knew him much better than I did, has written a description that catches perfectly the James Capozzola I knew from his writing:

Jim was prickly and suspicious and cynical and hard-edged and one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met.

I can’t believe he’s gone, either, Julia.

Many of Jim’s posts were seminal; if you check out some of the links above, you’ll find people linking to one in particular, “Al Gore and the Alpha Girls: The Enduring Power of Cliques in a Post-High-School World.” He won a Koufax Award for it. Here’s the link, in case you don’t check out those other links. Go read it. It’s important to keep work as fine as Jim’s alive.

Digby has an excellent suggestion for how to honor Jim’s memory; he wasn’t the only blogger who struggles in the face of ill health, limited means and no health insurance. Digby also has quite a bit from that Gore and the Heathers post of Jim’s.

Check out Skippy, too.

And here’s Julia’s suggestion for honoring Jim’s memory.

Anyway, if you’re so inclined, what you could do for Jim that would have made him happy is sometime pimp a blog that you don’t think is getting as much attention as it deserves.

Also maybe send your friends an e-mail when you don’t have an excuse.

I hope to post links to other of James Capozzola’s blog pieces during the week.

Beverly Sills also died last night. I think James would have been pleased to shuffle off this mortal coil in such celebrated company. But she was almost eighty, and surely her picture is somewhere posted next to a definition of a full and rewarding life.

Jim’s was also a well-lived life, but far too short. He was somewhere in his mid-forties.