(Let's Go Back to) Rockville: Which Cowman Is Andrew Sean Greer?

It's become kind of a joke around here that I can trace some convoluted friend-of-friend(-of-friend) relationship with just about anybody who walks in the door--I am, apparently, the Kevin Bacon of internet book retailing. I'm not sure if it's that I'm actually more connected to people (it's hard to believe it, since I actually don't get out of the house very much), or just that I'm always curious about finding out if I am. But the most fun of these connections (better even than figuring out with Khaled Hosseini that I went to high school with his wife) I knew about ahead of time: when The Confessions of Max Tivoli made Andrew Sean Greer a household name a few years ago (at least among households that read a lot), my mom mentioned that she was his science teacher back in junior high in Rockville, Md. So when he came by our offices to talk about his new book, The Story of a Marriage (which, by the way, was the most one of our author meetings has ever felt like a book club: no publishing gossip or book-tour tales--everybody wanted to talk passionately about, yes, the book itself), I sprung that connection on him and it was a pleasure to see him light up and say he remembered her well.

Well, a while later, after I had passed on his greetings to my mom, she sent me a photo that the school had unearthed of Andy starring in the 8th grade musical, in the plum role of Curly in Oklahoma!--complete with bright red chaps and mid-'80s aviator glasses. I immediately passed it on to Andy to check whether a) it was okay to post it on the blog, and b) it was actually him, because I knew he had an identical twin brother. Andy replied that it was, in fact, his brother Mike (he could tell by the glasses), but that they had both been in the show and he thought he could dig up one of himself. And indeed he did, so you can compare:

If you want to make further comparisons, check the more up-to-date photos of Andy and Mike (who has the not-at-all-funny job of Director of Web Technology at The Onion). --Tom

Comments

[Mike Smith on July 25, 2008 at 09:39 AM]

The comments section of the Onion interview with Andrew is playing out like a class reunion. Maybe your mom would recognize some of the logins...