As in: Remember when they actually sold books? The only “fiction” left at the Brown Bookstore is that it is still some sort of a bookstore. Ralph Lauren replaced Ralph Waldo Emerson long ago.
None of this has anything to do with the forthcoming memoir written by occasional Daily Dose contributor Matthew Lawrence, co-editor of Headmaster magazine and spelling bee impresario. “Coworkers I Have Had” contains forty profiles of coworkers from his days training cashiers and ordering sunglasses at his not-so-dream-job at the Brown Bookstore. He recently gave an interview to Dustin Kurtz at Melville House where he also shares memories of the store’s more eccentric habitués.
The guy who wore the same vest with no shirt every day who’d park and repark his car five or six times before coming in. He always bought paint with pennies and painted large-scale reproductions of the Titanic.
Mr. Lawrence also shares a surprising Candice Bergen anecdote — trés drôle.