I just got a google alert saying that the grand google machine was churning up a new instance of my name in its bowels (this is why it’s good to name your child something unique and easy to google search, like “Robbi Behr”). It led me to the following web page:

If you look closely, you will see it is a photo of Matthew, me, and Joshua Ferris. Let me tell you – Josh Ferris (I call him Josh) at the time was just being nice, tossing a literary lowbrow like myself a bone, chatting for a minute before turning his attention to smarter and more literate folk. I mean this sincerely – the guy was really being nice to us. And then this photographer pops up out of nowhere and takes our picture. At that particular moment I was mistaking that Josh Ferris had called his son “Pooper” when in fact he said “Cooper” and I was straightening that all out like a big stupid idiot. At any rate, I just want that photographer to know that poor Josh Ferris has no idea who we are, and if he’s expecting to make any money off of that stock photo, he is sorely mistaken.

That all being said, I want it to be officially known that I loved Josh’s book Then We Came to the End.

I originally chose if off of a bookshelf at a bookstore looking for Joshua Furst, whom I had recently met, but whose name I couldn’t remember but knew started with an “F”. This is, sadly, how I am and how I make things happen. But I liked the cover (again, how I am) and it ended up being one of the best reads I’d had in a long time. Wonderful, witty, engaging, and, in the end, steeped in humanity.

But, because of the name confusion, I wasn’t sure which Josh F. I was talking to and so didn’t want to mistakenly admire the book if it was actually by the other guy – which might actually be worse than thinking someone called his son “Pooper”.