MATT TANNENBAUM
& THE BOOKSTORE Interview by Harryet Candee
Happy Anniversary to you and The Bookstore! Has this bookstore always been in lenox? the Bookstore began its days in a living room in Stockbridge, just behind the alley that housed what later became known as Alice’s Restaurant. It moved to Lenox sometime in the late 60s, first to franklin Street, next to “the Restaurant” then to the corner of church and Housatonic (now home to Shots café) and then to its current location around 1974. I bought it on April 1st, 1976, ten days before I turned thirty. What made you decide to have a bookstore? I was a bookseller in New York city and then in Washington, d.c. before moving to the Berkshires. I’d heard of the Bookstore in Lenox before I moved here, and jumped at 20 • APRIl 2016 THE ARTful mINd
Photographs by Sabine von Falken
the chance to own it when the original owner decided to sell.
What made you decide to call it The Bookstore? Harryet, I’ve got to tell you, things were much simpler way back then.
You’ve lived in the Berkshires a long time; have had a lengthy and interesting life up in the country. Where did you live before? describe the road you traveled that lead you to being here, and the reasons why you did not stay in New York, where you grew up.
for ten years, from the end of high school to the time I
moved here to the Berkshires, I yo-yo’d between New York city, where I was born, and Washington, d.c., where I went to college at American University, was a sailor at the Navy Yard, and worked, first as shipping clerk then a small press buyer at a book wholesaler. Had me a short but intense time in Western Europe and North Africa as well. But my real apprenticeship was at the Gotham Book Mart in midtown Manhattan. It’s not that I didn’t see a future for myself there, it was just always time to move on. Until I got here, that is. looking back on your teen years, can you paint a picture for us of what your life was like, what key memories you hold dear that may have helped guide you into adulthood?