What was the name of that book?

April 4, 2023 11:52 AM

I attended the Ari Shapiro book event at Portland's Revolution Hall a few nights ago. The guest interviewer, Thomas Lauderdale, read an anecdote from an apparently out of print book that was about a young, overly enthusiastic Ari Shapiro as he happily worked at Portland's Rimsky-Korsakoffee House.

The coffee house is closed for half the week. No one I talked to at Powells could remember the name of the book. There is no YouTube video of the event.

It was a paperback with a purple cover. Who was the author, and what is the name of the book Mr. Lauderdale read from?

posted by CollectiveMind to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

Best answer: Was it The Rimsky Chronicles & Operating Manual - An Anthology, edited by Gillian Nance, published by "The Rimsky Press"? Seems to be available on the Internet Archive here if you make an account, the story about Shapiro (assuming it's the one in his tweet) should start on page 65 and is called "Tonight The Part of Waiter Will Be Played By Tiny Weintraub" by Kristin Scheel.

For posterity, that Twitter link says "Someone actually wrote a short story about my first night waiting tables there. It is 100% accurate."
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:02 PM on April 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: As Lucy cried when Schroeder played the "correct" version of Jingle Bells, ... "THAT'S IT!"
posted by CollectiveMind at 2:57 PM on April 4, 2023 [4 favorites]