a paris bookstore-y

A PARIS BOOKSTORE-Y
by George Cowmeadow Bauman
Folio-sized adventures are bound to happen while booking in Paris, The
City of Lights and Love, Museums and Cafes, and…Bookstores.
In September of 2006, Linda and I vacationed in magical Paris, our
first visit to France. We had lived in Europe twice – 1984-85 and 19971998 – and subsequently did a fair amount of traveling around the
continent of our ancestors, but somehow the land of fashion and
fromageries, champagne and champignon had eluded our wandering
ways.
1
We planned 10 days in Paris before renting a car to travel
southeast to Annecy in the French Alps, a medieval lakeside town at the
foot of the stunningly beautiful mountains. We wanted to visit Mount
Blanc, one of the settings for Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”.
The final third of the French trip was to be in the Burgundy region,
where we would visit the ancient Basilica of St. Mary Magdalene of
Vézelay, in which Sir Richard the Lion-Hearted received a blessing,
initiating his crusade to the Holy Land in 1190.
The blessing for our travels came from Linda’s 92-year-old mother
in Pittsburgh, who lit candles for a safe journey.
She got her wish – our safe return, as did I: a visit to one of the
holy sites for a bookstore freak like me – Shakespeare and Company
bookstore, on the Left Bank. Oh, yeah, we also visited Notre Dame, the
Louvre, Arc de Triumphe, Napoleon’s Tomb, etc.
Whenever we plan a vacation – American or international, one of the first
things I do is check out the bookstore-ing possibilities in the destination
city.
Not just booking, as most bibliophiles do. For me, finding books
is an important, but secondary goal.
The prize for this bibliopoliphile – bookstore-lover – is visiting
secondhand/antiquarian bookshops as well as the new-books bookstores
– if they’re independently owned. I do concede a few visits to the local
Barnes & Borders chain superstores here in Columbus, due to the
absence of any locally owned independent general new-books bookstores,
but my limited time in another city is going to be spent in the locally
owned shops.
Once inside a bookstore, the books do call to me.
But I’m also
there to observe all the details of the store’s ambience. I want to check
out how the shop presents itself to customers – its displays, music,
lighting, signage, fixtures, the sense of order/disorder, and, importantly,
the staff and its sense of customer service.
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Do the people look happy who work here? Do they connect with
the person behind the money when a book is bought? I try to eavesdrop
on staff non-customer conversations among themselves; nothing gives
away a bad environment as much as bitching retailers.
However,
bookstores do have a much higher percentage of contented workers than
most retail centers.
I look for store décor: book-related newspaper/magazine clippings,
community postings, whimsical book-knacks, free local alternative
newspapers.
Do they have a store cat?
And do they have proprietary mugs, T-shirts, and totebags? If so,
I’ll take one of each home for my collection.
After 40+ years of running 14 different bookstores, I cast an
experienced eye around me in bookstores, and can determine which are
well-run and which linger by the grace of tax-exemption; which are
comfortable to browse in for hours; and which have me heading
regretfully for the door while my carry-in coffee is still warm.
This professional awareness enhances my enjoyment of being in a
colleague’s enterprise. I sigh with the pleasure of a mini-Christmas each
time I open the door to a bookstore, familiar or new.
I’m entering a
bastion of the printed word, a literary center where books and reading
are the prime focus of those who enter, customers and employees alike, a
crowded room of books and bookpeople and the spirits of every one of the
authors and characters and editors of those gathered volumes. A place
where coming to entertainment and enlightenment via the printed word
is celebrated by time and money spent with like-minded folks.
After browsing around – and if the moment and the light are right,
I try to take a photograph of the bookseller and the shop, usually with
their permission…and to their amusement. What can I say?! Bookstore
memories are among the most cherished for me to bring back whenever I
travel, leaving the flat farmfields of central Ohio behind.
3
Some
cities
and countries
are
better
than
others
at satisfying
bibliopoliphilia, and as we planned our visit to France, I reveled in Paris’
reputation as one of the best cities for bookstore-ing.
I planned to visit many bookshops – both those housed inside
restored centuries-old buildings, and the ones outside along the river. I
have several vintage postcards of these riverside, al fresco bookdealers,
and was looking forward to photographing them myself.
Especially I wanted to pilgrimage to a Mecca of bookselling: the
famous Shakespeare and Company, which Henry Miller called “a
wonderland of books”.
I ultimately wanted to meet the legendary 92-
year-old owner, American-born, eccentric George Whitman.
Via the Internet, and thanks to the recommendation of a friend who
visits Paris each year, we rented a very comfortable apartment on the Ile
de la Cite´, the island in the middle of the Seine, where civilization in
Paris began in the first century, BC. To our south was the Latin Quarter;
across the river to the north was the trendy Marais district. From our
center location, most of historic Paris was within walking distance.
Our second-floor flat was one block from imposing Notre Dame,
whose flying buttresses could be seen from our window each evening as I
downloaded each day’s photographs and worked at my laptop with the
day’s journal notes.
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BIENVENUE A PARIS
Arriving in Paris at 9am with no sleep during the previous 24 frustrating
hours of transcontinental air travel – we’ll never fly Delta again – we
checked into a wonderful studio apartment owned by an American in
Paris.
We were tempted to crash immediately on the inviting queen-sized
bed, but Paris was out there waiting for us. We wanted to avoid jetlag,
and were eager to get out on the heralded streets of Paris, answering the
siren-call of cafes, museums, and bookstores.
The weather was glorious – unusually warm and sunny. Great for
photography. And walking to Shakespeare and Company.
Nearby Notre Dame was an obvious first stop, because it is
amazingly impressive…and because it was on the way to Shakespeare &
Co.
We lit a candle for Linda’s mother and paid homage to that
magnificent
cathedral
which
exudes
religion
and
history
and
architectural awe equally. No matter how blasé you are, Notre Dame will
overwhelm you, command your attention, and force you to sense the
history resonating from its stone walls and rose stained-glass windows.
Only the shallowest of tourists could pass through Notre Dame and leave
unaffected by its thousand-year presence.
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Exiting to the parvis where tourists and locals, worshippers and hustlers,
photographers and lovers hung about, we paused to re-orient ourselves
to the 21st century and Paris’ lay-out. After Notre Dame, it takes a few
minutes to adjust to non-cathedral reality.
Our map told us to hang a left and cross the Pont au Double over
the south branch of the Seine to the Left Bank to find Shakespeare and
Company, following in the footsteps of thousands of previous pilgrims to
the 55-year-old shop.
The two shrines were within the distance of a
Hank Aaron homerun.
As we stepped onto the Left Bank, we paused to get our bearings
from the recommended “Paris by Arrondissement”
6
.
7
THE BOUQUINISTES
While Linda worked with finding the correct micro-map, I glanced left
down the river and unexpectedly spied a row of the green book-boxes of
the famous bouquinistes, the colorful riverside bookdealers who have
peddled secondhand books and other printed material along the Seine
since the 16th century. I hadn’t expected to see them right away, and
was adrenalized by their surprisingly nearby presence. For a bookselling
aficionado such as myself, they are one of major symbols of Paris, and
here they were, unexpectedly, and beckoning, as they have for centuries.
Collette wrote of the bouquinistes in “Looking Backwards” (1942):
“Standing, absorbed in its dream, part of Parisian
youth reads passionately. It has always read at the
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bookstalls and along the quais, imprisoned under
the stall-roofs like a sparrow in a trap.”
In 1557, they were labeled as thieves for selling forbidden Protestant
pamphlets during the Wars of Religion.
They’ve been a constant and
sometimes controversial presence along the river ever since. In 1721, a
decree forbade the Seine booksellers from further trading on the banks of
the river, pushed in part by the proprietary interests of the established
Parisian bookstores.
Soon the ban was ignored, and the somewhat
disreputable bookhawkers returned and multiplied and declined and
rebounded again through the centuries.
A history of the bouquinistes, “The Book-Hunter in Paris”, was
written by Octave Uzanne in 1893, and he wrote, “At the beginning of the
18th century the second-hand bookseller inundated Paris.”
The French Revolution was beneficial to the bouquinistes, for
entire libraries of incredibly valuable books and manuscripts were seized
from church and civic nobles and the expensive, sometimes irreplaceable
volumes, showed up as cheap books on the Seine scene.
In 1891, the booksters received permission to permanently attach
the boxes to the stone quayside walls.
Now there are 21st-century regulations to control the 300
bouquinistes. Each dealer must be open at least four days a week, and
may have no more than four of the 4’ x 8’ boxes – six feet long, 14 inches
high, and 2.5 feet deep, painted a uniform forest green, and permanently
attached to the stone quayside walls under the protecting trees.
Each morning as Parisians dash wildly to work in their small cars
through the narrow streets, the bouquinistes unlock the jointed tops of
their boxes. The lids are raised and folded back to provide both a small
roof and a backdrop to the four shelves of merchandise.
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Each evening the lids are lowered, padlocked, and barred, contents
secure.
Lately, due to the profitability of selling non-book material such as
posters, prints and postcards, some bottom-liners have expanded their
offerings to the point where a law was passed – egalité, fraternité, et
regulate´! – requiring the bouquinistes to present at least three boxes
devoted to printed matter – books, posters, broadsides, periodicals.
This French expansion into high-profit non-books echoes what’s
happened in most American bookstores, particularly the new-books
ones. Some have been able to extend their financial viability by adding
all sorts of non-book material, though the space needed to display such
stock frequently means fewer lower-profit books being stocked.
Though the bouquinistes are now permitted to sell the onceforbidden souvenir material, no more than one of their boxes may display
the same take-it-back-home mementos sold at ubiquitous stalls and
shops located at every major and minor tourist-catching location in
Paris.
Tourists do love to buy miniature Eiffel towers, coasters, and
posters, and who can resist sending back home one of the infamous
risqué French postcards? Blessedly, most bouquinistes just stick with
printed matter.
Though Shakespeare and Company was our primary destination that
first sunny afternoon, detours are inevitable in this city of omnipresent
history, incredible beauty and world-class attractions.
We found it
impossible to walk in a straight line to any guidebook recommendation;
there were so many “Let’s head down that picturesque side street,” and
“That corner café sure looks inviting,” and many more exclamations
which heralded a side trip.
We knew that we’d get to Whitman’s bookstore eventually, so
naturally we took the detour to the beckoning bookboxes with their
backs to the Seine and their fronts to a broad, shaded sidewalk lining the
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busy six-laned street, Quai Montebello.
I was excited to be there,
experiencing what for me had only been described in books and seen in
photographs.
Instinctively my camera came out and I began taking my own
photographs of the outdoor booksellers and bookstores of Paris.
Nodding silently to the closest bouquiniste who was engrossed in a book
at the end of his line of boxes, I noticed that most of the books were
wrapped in clear, thick plastic and placed on four tiered shelves rising to
the back, where the roof of the box had been propped. For a moment the
plastic confused me. Why would the bookseller not want the browser to
be able to examine the book? That sometimes sensuous tactility sells
many books.
Then, aha! I looked behind me at all the cars flying past just 10
feet away and recognized that the plastic was protection against the
street-grit from heavy traffic.
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These sidewalk-sellers have been known for centuries for their low
prices, bargains to be had by sharp-eyed bibliophiles. But the prices I
saw are not usually associated with the concept of a good deal. Would
Mickey D’s sell a $10 burger on their Value Menu? The cheapest books
were beat-up paperbacks for five Euros – a little over seven bucks, and
there weren’t many of them. Most titles were in the €20-40 range. Some
collectible items sported prices of 100 Euros and higher.
Linda and I browsed contentedly there in the sun along the Seine
on our first Paris walk, Notre Dame visible on the other side of this
channel of the river and Shakespeare & Company two blocks away, next
on our walk.
We had ten days to explore the city, and we didn’t want to
be rushed.
12
13
A few bookstalls up the Seine – it was impossible to visit just one
bouquiniste – I met my first bookman of the river.
He was preparing to open his bookboxes for business; I watched
with professional curiosity. What were his opening routines each day?
What did he use for a cash register? When did customers first show up?
Was he inured to conducting business along the Seine, across from
historic Notre Dame?
14
Letting him finish his morning chores before trying to make his
acquaintance, I walked to the far end of his 24’ to begin browsing. Linda
had gotten pleasantly lost looking at prints and posters at the last stall.
I marveled at the plastic-coated books, and looked for one I could
open.
Very few of the books were in anything other than French,
understandably. However, my overseas travel in non-English-speaking
countries has taught me that almost every secondhand bookdealer has a
few books in English somewhere.
(See my store-y, “Buffalo Bill in
Helsinki”.)
I found one – a tattered paperback of John Grisham’s “The
Partners” – and picked it up to check the price: three Euros, about four
to five bucks.
The alert bookseller spotted me with an English book and walked
over with an animated and friendly manner, asking in decent English if I
wanted books in English.
“Oui,” I replied with a smile, and a conversation between
bookdealers began, just as a tourist boat – a bateaux mouch – slipped by
down on the Seine behind us, the tourguide’s amplified French narration
drifting up to street level to mingle with the traffic sounds on the other
side of us.
“I am Xavier,” he said, pleased with his ability to speak English.
“Je m’appelle Georges,” I replied, trying to reciprocate his linguistic
respect, yet embarrassed by my high-school French, which is as French
as French fries.
Xavier was a long-haired 40-something, wearing wire-rims and a
jeans jacket, with an appealing, sincere manner which must have paid
dividends
interacting
with
English
speaking
tourists
everyday.
Hmmmm…Be your enthusiastic book-loving/selling self and get paid to
do it. Hmmmm…
I complimented him on his English.
15
“I studied English in school and I would translate what I read into
French,” he replied. “And now I practice every day with students and
tourists.” With a smirk and eye-sparkle, he added, “And pretty young
girls!”
He asked, “You are American? Where in America?”
When I told him Ohio, he quickly replied, “Oh, yes, I know of zees
Ohio!”
“You do? How do you know this place?”
“Eet ees because of Neil Young, and hees song “Four Dead in
Ohio”!
And without pausing, he asked, “Ees eet near Florida?”
“No,” I replied, stunned by a Frenchman’s associating CSNY’s song
about the Kent State massacre with my adopted home state.
“Near Chicago?” he inquired, continuing his questioning litany of
familiar American cities. “Los Angeles? New York?”
How do you explain locations to someone unfamiliar with the
geography of such a huge country as America?
You go for the rough
idea, like telling Xavier that the capital of Buckeyeland was about halfway between New York and Chicago. That satisfied him, and helped him
feel good about what little he did know about America. I’d be as ignorant
of French geography if I hadn’t been cartophilically pouring over maps of
France while planning our trip.
I informed Xavier of my profession, and he lit up even more,
pleased to have the opportunity to not only speak English with an
American, but to speak it with a fellow bookseller.
He explained that to become a bouquiniste, an application was
filed with the city of Paris and that the wait for a license could take up to
four years. The location assigned a rookie bookie was the worst: the
furthest location up- or downriver from Notre Dame. As dealers gained
seniority among the bouquinistes, they could move closer to the
cathedral of religion and commerce. Some booksellers were second-, and
16
even third-generation bouquinistes, inheriting riverside locations as well
as inventory.
When I asked Xavier about how he liked being a bouquiniste, as
opposed to having a normal shop, he laughed and said, “No, no. Out
here I am free! No factory work!
“For ten years I have been here,” he said. He rubbed his thumb
and forefinger together in the universal symbol for money, and laughed,
“When I make zees, I close!”
I laughed with him in envious understanding.
“On rainy days, I walk around zee city and sell some books to zee
bigger bookstores. Zey are my competition, because zey have low prices
now, not like before when bouquinistes had zee best prices.”
Shaking his head again, he said, “Zees business of books, it is zee
dice”, gesturing as though tossing dice. “But I like it very much.”
To illustrate my enthusiastic agreement with his sentiment, I
quoted author Will Y. Darling from “The Bankrupt Bookseller” (1931),
“I savor every hour of every day the
good fortune that made me a bookseller.
It might have made me anything, but it
could not have made me happier.”
As we talked spiritedly, his eyes kept flicking to a bookbox browser, and
apologetically said, “I must be looking always at zee people. Many books
are stolen if we do not watch zem.”
I wondered aloud where he got the books he sold.
“People stop in cars to sell me books. Other drivers are not happy
when zey stop in zee lane of traffic to bring me books, so I must make
decisions quickly.”
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Multiply the selling-books stops at Xavier’s stall by the 300
bouquinistes and you get an idea as to how curbside bookdeals can
complicate Paris’ already chaotic traffic patterns along the river.
I asked him what authors he liked to read, and, exhibiting his
joyful spirit, he proclaimed, “I prefer Henry Miller!”
Finally I was ready to move on – Linda had caught up to me, and
told him I was on my way to Shakespeare and Company.
Excitedly,
he
asked,
“Do
you
know
George
Whitman
of
Shakespeare and Company? He ees very kind. He gave me egg to eat.
Not just me, everyone!”
(I was soon to know firsthand of Whitman’s
generosity.)
Xavier continued, “He knows James Joyce!
And hees sister –
Whitman’s, not Joyce’s – how you say, takes over zee shop.”
I knew he was referring to Whitman’s daughter Sylvia now running
Shakespeare and Company, not his sister, but this was no time to
correct Xavier’s misinformation.
He concluded, “George Whitman is grandson of Walt Whitman!”
(Whitman is well aware of this false rumor, I learned, and does little to
squelch it.)
Xavier patiently posed for several pictures, but they showed a
serious man, not the smiling bookseller who had been kind to converse
with me.
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“Maybe we see each other again!” he exclaimed, as we shook hands and
said “Au revoir”.
I walked several yards away to a shaded green bench facing the
Seine where I could make some journal notes about this enjoyable
encounter with a bouquiniste.
Minutes later I heard my name being called, “Monsieur Georges!
Monsieur Georges!”
Xavier was walking quickly my way, happily holding up a book,
while glancing back at his customer-less bookstall.
He’d found an
English-language copy of the culinary classic, Fanny Farmer’s “The
Boston Cooking-School Cook Book” among his dusty, plasticized books.
I didn’t want the cookbook, knowing I had two copies back at
Acorn, and not wanting to pack home such a thick, heavy book. Yet he
was so pleased with himself that I couldn’t help but ask how much it
was. 15 Euros I was told – about $20.
“But you are my distinguished professional colleague, and eet ees
possible to give ten-percent discount.”
I bought it for its intrinsic value – a vacation souvenir of the best
kind, one from connecting with another person in another culture.
After the commercial transaction concluded, I surprised him by
asking him for a favor: Would he inscribe the book I’d just bought, as it
was going into my personal collection.
“Yes,” he replied slowly, shaking my hand, “It ees possible, but
why do you want me to write in your book?” Obviously the autograph
hounds and paparazzi had yet to sweep down the tree-shaded sidewalks
of the Seine, collecting booksellers’ pictures and signatures to sell on
EBay in the “Bad Boys of Bookselling” category.
In simple terms, I tried to explain my love of bookstores and
bookselling, and how I collected bookstore photographs and experiences
when I travel.
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He stared at me through his glasses, then shook his head as he
held out his hand for the book to sign, surely thinking how weird this
American was.
I prefer to think of myself as just a bit eccentric, not
weird. Linda might have a comment or two about her perspective of my
eccentricity…
Xavier wrote:
“Pour Georges en souvenir de quelques paroles
parisiennes et Americans dits a glorieuse jour (19 Septembre 2006) pour
un confriere (fellow!) bouquiniste des rives de la Seine. Xavier”
We thanked each other profusely once more, and again I walked away,
far away, so I would not be tempted by the offer of any other book from
this engaging and successful riverside bookseller of Paris.
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Three weeks later, when it came time to pack for the return to Columbus,
I agonized about the bulk and weight of the now-special cookbook. There
was just no way, no space to take it home, but I didn’t want to lose
Xavier’s precious inscription on the half-title page.
So I carefully cut out the desired page, inserted it into a special
copy of
Sylvia Beach’s “Shakespeare and Company” I had brought
overseas with me, and left the near-intact Fanny Farmer in our rented
apartment for the use of the next residents, unaware of its special story.
Come to think of it, I should have written a note explaining how the
cookbook arrived at #14 Chanoinesse: “There once was a bouquiniste in
Paris and a bookseller in Columbus, Ohio, and they met along the river
Seine one beautiful autumn afternoon…”
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SYLVIA BEACH AND THE FIRST SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY
When we first decided to splurge and go to Paris, I began thinking about
the bookstores of Paris.
Immediately Sylvia Beach and her celebrated
Shakespeare and Company bookstore came to mind.
I’ve read her fascinating history of the store – “Shakespeare and
Company” (1959) – a couple of times, the first when I was in graduate
school and taking a seminar on James Joyce.
I didn’t connect with
Joyce at all – I’d enrolled because I liked the droll humor of the professor
whom I’d had before, but I certainly did with the publisher of his
“Ulysses”. She was Sylvia Beach, a New-Jersey-born woman who was at
the center of the famous American literary community of wild-andwonderful Paris in the 1920s.
She had founded her bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, on
the advice of her very good friend, Adrienne Monnier, who owned a
French bookshop across rue de l’Odeon from where Shakespeare and
Company would gain international repute.
From 1919 on, many of America’s leading literary lights landed in
the small shop. Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson,
Ezra Pound, Paul Valery, T. S. Eliot, Aldus Huxley, Richard Wright, and
many more spent time there. Some literary ex-pats used Beach’s store
as their postal address, the one certain location where they could be
contacted regularly.
Beach’s place in literary history was bound when she befriended
James Joyce, living in Paris with his family. He was struggling to write
his challenging prose and get it published.
After Joyce had received
several publishers’ rejections of “Ulysses”, bookseller Beach impulsively
offered to publish the book.
“Undeterred by lack of capital, experience, and all the other
requisites of a publisher,” she wrote, “I went right ahead with ‘Ulysses’.”
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“Ulysses” became famous for its unique writing style and subject,
as well as for being the target of censorship so intense that copies had to
be smuggled into the States, away from the prying eyes and hands of the
U.S. postal system. 77 years later, the Modern Library named it the best
novel of the 20th century.
It was Beach herself who coined the term
“Bloomsday” for June 16th, on which many celebrations of “Ulysses” are
held throughout the world each year.
From 1919 to 1941, Beach ran one of the world’s most important
and renowned bookstores.
But one morning in ‘41, Beach refused to
show a copy of “Finnegan’s Wake” to a furious Nazi officer, knowing he
had come to make an issue over it. “We’re coming back to confiscate all
your
goods
today!”
he
threatened,
and
drove
off
to
assemble
reinforcements. Two hours later, there was no evidence a bookstore ever
having existed there.
Beach and her friends had hurriedly carted all her books and
furniture up to the third floor and taken down the light fixtures while a
carpenter removed bookshelves from the wall. A house painter had even
blacked out the name of the shop above the door. The shop was saved
by ceasing to exist. It never reopened.
Sylvia Beach was eventually arrested by the Germans and spent
six months in an internment camp. As WWII neared its end, she was
living with Monnier in Monnier’s apartment across the street from the
former Shakespeare and Company location.
In her autobiography,
Beach wrote of the liberation of Paris:
“There was still a lot of shooting going on in the rue
de l’Odeon, and we were getting tired of it, when one
day a string of jeeps came up the street and stopped
in front of my house. I heard a deep voice calling:
‘Sylvia!’ And everybody in the street took up the cry
of ‘Sylvia!’”
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“’It’s Hemingway! It’s Hemingway!’ cried Adrienne.
I flew downstairs; we met with a crash; he picked
me up and swung me around and kissed me while
people on the street and in the windows cheered.
“He was in battle dress, grimy, and bloody.
A machine gun clanked on the floor…He wanted to
know if there was anything he could do for us. We
asked him if he could do something about the Nazi
snipers on the roof tops in our street. He got his
company out of the jeeps and took them up on the
roof. We heard firing for the last time in the rue de
l’Odeon. Hemingway and his men came down and
rode off in their jeeps – to ‘liberate,’ according to
Hemingway, ‘the cellar at the Ritz.’”
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GEORGE WHITMAN AND THE
SECOND SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY
Having read Beach’s biography years ago, as well as “The Very Rich
Hours of Adrienne Monnier” (1976), I was familiar with the store-y of
Shakespeare and Company. What I didn’t know much of was the store-y
of the Shakespeare and Company founded by Massachusetts-born
George Whitman in 1951, which continues today.
This later store was our destination on our first magical day as
initiates to the shrine of Paris.
Whitman was an idealistic young man from well-off parents. He hobo-ed
across America and walked through adventures and borders from
California to Panama after college, observing how people lived and
listening to what they said about their lives, politics, and economics.
Back in Massachusetts, he opened the Taunton Book Exchange and
became a Marxist entrepreneur, foreshadowing his life’s work and
philosophy.
When he learned of the call for volunteers in post-war France, he
soon sailed to Paris. With books in his blood, he began scrounging up
scarce English language books and selling them out of his cheap hotel
room – where he first met customer Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who became a
lifelong friend and colleague (City Lights Books/San Francisco).
In 1951, Whitman was inspired to open an English-language
bookstore called La Mistral, across the Seine from Notre Dame, in a
building which had been a monastery in 1600, and more recently an
Arab laundry.
He stated to one interviewer, “I like to tell people I run a socialist
utopia that masquerades as a bookstore.” From the beginning he had a
bed in the back of the shop for friends, kept soup bubbling for hungry
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visitors, and offered a free lending library for those who couldn’t afford
the books.
In the late 1950s, Sylvia Beach was justifiably celebrated during the
renaissance of interest in the American literary scene in Paris of the
1920s. One day she visited La Mistral bookshop to meet Whitman, and
invited him to tea. He was well aware of her literary legacy to Paris and
the world.
When she died in 1962, he bought Beach’s long-stored books, and
in 1964 renamed his bookstore Shakespeare and Company to honor her.
Several months before leaving America, I was excited to learn of a recent
book about Whitman’s Shakespeare and Company, titled “Time Was Soft
There:
A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare and Company” by Canadian
journalist Jeremy Mercer.
“
26
I ordered a copy from Amazon – no local stores stocked it – and read it
immediately.
Much of what I took with me to Paris in the way of knowing about
this second edition of Shakespeare and Company came from Mercer’s
mostly-positive, inside look at the store and its cast of truly eccentric
characters.
Mercer was a down-and-outer when he landed in Paris, having fled
for his life after betraying a source on his crime beat in Toronto. With
little money, he wandered the Parisian streets aimlessly, wondering
about his future. One rainy Sunday he stepped out of the downpour and
into Shakespeare and Company…and stayed for about six months.
Stayed, as in lived there. On his first day, he was told by a young
woman, “The bookstore is like a shelter. George lets people live here for
free.” A prominent sign hangs above the door between two of the many
small rooms that make up the bookstore, stating the store’s motto:
“Be not inhospitable to strangers
lest they be angels in disguise.”
Whitman has a philosophy/policy of letting young would-be writers stay
in the shop in one of the many small beds scattered throughout the three
crowded floors of overflowing bookcases. Each resident guest is required
to do three things:
write at least a one-page autobiography; read one
book a day – usually recommended by George; and to assist one hour a
day in the store, including helping to open the store at noon and to close
at midnight, which occurs 365 days a year. According to Mercer, there’s
no shower, one horribly filthy toilet, and a hallway on the third floor that
has been turned into a none-too-clean, roach-infested mini-kitchen.
“Exceedingly disagreeable and uncomfortable,” observed one early writerresident of the shop.
27
But it has been a home to tens of thousands of writers, including
Allan Ginsberg, Lawrence Durrell, Anais Nin, Ferlinghetti, Langston
Hughes, Henry Miller, and Richard Wright. Most stay for a few days to a
couple of weeks before moving on.
Whitman wrote in “The Rage and
Bone Shop of the Heart” (2000) that it is “a way of repaying the
hospitality I received in many countries when I was a vagabond”.
As a published writer, Mercer gained favor with the aging owner
and settled in quickly, eventually bedding down in the antiquarian room.
His book is an amazing tale of the wacky life in Shakespeare and
Company, working closely with the eccentric Whitman, a very irascible
man given to bursts of generosity and anger. He writes about both the
28
international customers – many of whom came into the shop clutching
their guidebooks, fingers inserted to the page which spoke of the
infamous status of the bohemian bookstore – and the equally
international, young, itinerant, bookstore-crashing staff, most of whom
floated in and stayed for a few days, handling George’s cash drawer,
running his store, becoming involved with each other as well as
customers.
Mercer observed, “…the day you move into an infamous old
bookstore certainly isn’t the day for rational thought…The bookstore was
catnip for idealistic writers and I was succumbing to the drug.”
He learned that in 1981, the women-loving Whitman was married
to a British woman and a daughter was born to them. The girl was given
a name that truly tells how deeply George honored his famous
bookselling predecessor: Sylvia Beach Whitman.
After several years, her mother moved with Sylvia to England to
avoid the stress of living in a chaotic, communal bookstore.
Near the end of his stay at Shakespeare and Company, Mercer
decided to try and track Sylvia – who had become estranged from her
father. After doing so, he chunneled to London, where she was at the
University of London, majoring in Slavic and East European Studies, and
acting in student theater productions.
According to Mercer, he was the catalyst to persuade Whitman’s
daughter to return to the store to try and reconcile with her father. The
reunion was successful, eventually.
Sylvia Beach Whitman is now the general manager of Shakespeare
and Company, and shows much affection – and exasperation – with her
elderly, eccentric, Marxist/socialist/capitalist father.
I was hoping to meet them both, and to visit the location of the
former Shakespeare and Company of Sylvia Beach.
29
On this first day in Paris, Linda and I crossed a Left Bank street, looked
to the left, and there it was: Whitman’s Shakespeare and Company.
Between the busy quay and the set-back bookstore is a treeshaded walkway and a flower-ed mini-park, creating an esplanade in
front of the store, and a sense of centering on Shakespeare and
Company.
37 Rue de la Bucherie
4th arrondissement
Two canopied cafés were to its right, which became regular stops on our
Paris walks.
30
Naturally, the first thing to do was have Linda take a picture of me
in front of the store.
After facing the camera, I turned around and faced the store’s exterior,
savoring and absorbing the moment.
There were two entrances; the one on the right under the neon-onwood
golden sign was for the main shop.
The door on the far left –
unseen in this photo – led to the antiquarian room, where Jeremy Mercer
lived for several months collecting information, stories, and experience
for his book.
I approached the main door reverently, though Whitman – inside
and up in his third floor apartment over the shop – would have laughed
31
at the hesitancy, even as he would have reveled in my reverence at what
he had done as a bookseller in Paris.
Stepping inside the shrine, my eyes were too slow to fill the greed
of my desire to take it all in instantaneously. Walking into any bookstore
new to me is always a thrill; now I was walking into perhaps the most
renowned bookstore in the world.
I don’t overstate my awe of the
moment.
The front desk sat in the middle of the first room. Narrow aisles
left and right of the desk ran back to the next room, like a canyon
splitting in two, and the cashier was at a desk on the dividing mesa,
perched in the prow of a ship of books.
As was a large black cat, snoozing away on the desk-high display
of books attached to the front of the desk.
I was in heaven.
As my
Edward Gorey T-shirt reads, “Cats and books/Life is good.”
When the young woman at the desk finished ringing up a customer
buying Jack Kerouac, counting out the change in French, she looked up
32
at me and smiled expectantly. I asked her if they had a copy of Mercer’s
“Time Was Soft There”, using that request as an ice-breaker into the
store’s ambiance.
An English accent graced the “No, we don’t,” I received in response.
Surprised, I asked her why, since the book was about that very
shop.
“Because George doesn’t like the book,” she declared, assuming
that anyone asking for the Mercer book would certainly not have to be
told who “George” was.
Oh. So much for breaking the ice there.
Since Linda and I had planned that afternoon to take the Left
Bank/Latin Quarter walking tour recommended by trusty travel-guide
Rick Steves, I decided to put off to another day asking if it would be
possible to meet the master bibliopole.
We did roam the jumble of small rooms, stepping past the wishing
well in the floor with many international coins, and squeezing between
books and people to progress past shelf-ladders which would give
nightmares to American insurance agents, and on to the cavelike
backrooms.
33
The books’ topics ranged as widely as the library of the UN. As a book
dealer, I couldn’t help but wonder what really was the market for such
obscure books. Literature predominated.
I was surprised at how expensive all the books were, including
used copies, which the store also sold. With the $ so weak against the €,
I had to accept that books to bring back home were out of my range. Of
all the 25 or so countries we’ve visited over the years, France was the
only place from which I did not ship purchased books for my store.
Browsers were everywhere, and were constantly jostled by
bookstore-tourists like me, agog in Paradise.
I wasn’t looking for books to read;
I was looking to read the
bookstore.
Linda and I climbed a narrow, steep wooden staircase to the
second floor, where all the books in all the bookcases were not for sale. It
34
was called The Library, where staffers and privileged customers hung out
and read.
I took a few pictures, my heart singing at being in this very special
bookstore.
As we eventually left, the front desk woman remembered that I’d asked
about the Mercer book and said, with her strong Brit accent, “If you are
going to be in Paris on Sunday, you could come back and have tea with
everyone.”
I said we would, wondering who “everyone” would be, and avec trés
joyeux walked back into the sunny autumn Parisian afternoon, knowing
we’d be back.
And we were, almost every evening.
35
Linda and I spent our 10 days in Paris walking thru narrow,
ancient, cobblestoned streets to justifiably-famous museums, cafés
associated with literary figures, and stunning historical plazas.
We
climbed the steps to the top of the Arch de Triumphe and walked the
entire length of the Champs Elysees. We boat-ed up and down the Seine
and tried unsuccessfully to get tickets to what once was the scandal of
Paris, the Moulin Rouge.
The click of my digital camera was as constant as our “Oh, look at
that!” We took long walks all over Paris, dawdling often in sidewalk cafés
with beer and coffee to people-watch and make journal notes.
But no matter how late the hour, or where we had been –
Montmartre at sunset, a café facing the Eiffel Tower as the dazzling lights
came on at 8, being whistled out of the Luxembourg Gardens at twilight –
we made a habit of walking to our Ille de la Cité apartment past two
Parisian institutions:
Shakespeare & Company and Notre Dame,
pausing to honor each as we concluded our day in Paris.
36
At Notre Dame, each evening we pointed out to one another some
interesting architectural detail we hadn’t seen before, mostly some
statuary mounted on the front of the beautifully night-lit cathedral.
Behind us, skateboarders and fire-jugglers worked the crowd for some
change.
Con artists and innocent tourists drawn together in front of
37
Notre Dame as so many Parisians and pilgrims have been over the
centuries.
When we turned the corner to our small pension, our minds, our
beings,
reverberated
with
the
sounds
and
sights
and
acquired
information and sensations of each day. Mona Lisa met Napoleon in our
settling-into-comfort conversations.
Images of Nazis storm-trooping
through the Arch de Triumphe blended with Victor Hugo’s writing desk
off Place des Vosges. Revisiting it each evening together helped solidify
and clarify our days in the capitol of France, which was exceeding our
pre-trip expectations.
One of our special destinations was 8 rue Dupuytren, which was
the location of the former Shakespeare and Company owned by Sylvia
Beach, 1919-1941. We paused at the street’s beginning, looking up its
slight incline to the Odeon Theatre de l’Europe – the former ComedieFrancais – at the other end, absorbing the scene, familiar to so many
literary ex-pats between the wars.
38
Joyce trod those cobblestones half-blind, looking for a publisher and
found Sylvia Beach.
Hemingway and his soldier-buddies returned for
Paris’ liberation to greet Sylvia, and granted her request that he wipe out
the last of the rooftop snipers on the street. Were those the ghosts of
Gertrude and Alice wisping up the street beyond No. 8? The street was
visually empty, but in our mental vision, it was crowded with characters
from one of Paris’ heydays.
We walked up the haunted street, along the old storefronts, looking
– as so many had before us – for No. 8.
The shop may have been a bookstore at one time, but now it
lacked all literary majesty – a gray, desolate, empty room, most recently a
boutique.
Once again I let my imagination loose as I peered through the dirty
front window. I could almost see Beach hosting Paris’ literati – selling or
renting books, handing out mail to those ex-pats who used her address
when their own was changing and uncertain.
Next door was an antiquarian bookshop.
Thinking to meet a
colleague and learn his impressions of being located next to Beach’s
bookstore, I pushed into the dark, book-filled room.
A large, solid,
hunched-over man looked up from his desk and glared at us over the top
of his glasses, with no word of greeting.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” I said pleasantly.
He continued to stare.
“Parlez-vous Anglais?” I asked, unnerved by his silent attitude.
“What do you want?” he said gruffly in thick, French-accented
English.
Surprised at his lack of civility, I nonetheless continued.
“I’m a
bookdealer from America and was wanting to visit the site of the former
Shakespeare and Company and…”
39
He interrupted to say, “There, over there!”, thrusting his head
toward the wall behind him whose other side was once lined with Beach’s
bookcases.
When I went to ask him more, he ended the “conversation” and
dismissed me by putting his head back down over the antiquarian book
he was examining in the yellow light of a banker’s lamp, magnifying glass
in his left hand – the Grinch of the French bookworld.
.
Back
outside,
after
photographing
the
exterior
plaque
commemorating Beach’s Shakespeare and Company, we walked up the
slight grade to the Odeon Theatre at the other end of rue Dupeytren
silently, letting past and present fuse our memorable experience with the
literary history of the street.
We had paid due homage to one of the
shrines of bookselling.
40
SUNDAY IN PARIS
I still hadn’t met the George Whitman, but I was hopeful to do so at tea
on Sunday, to which I’d been invited.
That Sunday morning the massive Notre Dame bells called us to a
memorable crowded mass, local worshippers blending with mostlyrespectful, photo-taking tourists, the saturating incense rising to the
high vaulted stone nave some 60 meters above.
After lunch at the Café de la Bucherie – next-door to Shakespeare and
Company, Linda headed off to Paris’ famous film museum via the Metro,
so I had as much time as needed if I got lucky and was able to meet
41
Whitman.
We agreed to meet back at the same café at five o’clock,
anticipating unique stories to share.
And my afternoon definitely qualified as unique.
I finished my small dark café and strolled across the bookstore’s
courtyard, slipping among the several browsing bargain-hunters at the
marked-down
shelves
and
racks,
and
entered
Shakespeare
and
Company, ready for a special bookstore adventure.
Sable-black Kitty was lying contentedly on the front counter, gold eyes
half-closed, watching humans swirl around the door on their booking
and bookstore-ing missions. I gave the sleek cat a couple of strokes and
asked the very attractive young blonde at the front desk if it would be
possible to meet George Whitman.
42
She smiled and said with a British accent, “You know he’s 92 now,
and spends most of the time upstairs in his apartment, sleeping a lot.
He doesn’t come down here too often.”
Damn.
Presenting my Acorn Bookshop business card, I introduced myself
and told her that I’d read and heard so much about Whitman that I had
really been looking forward to meeting my greatly esteemed colleague in
the book business, hoping that mention of Whitman and me sharing
colleagueship would get me past the pleasant but unpromising
gatekeeper. No such luck.
She did encourage me to attend the tea later at 4, “though George
doesn’t show up very often.”
Looking forward to at least the upstairs tea, where Whitman at
least might show up, I began browsing the crowded shop as one can only
do when he doesn’t have someone waiting for him, no matter how patient
the waiter – a real luxury for bookstore browsers.
I savored the moment, sticking my head and camera into all
corners and alcoves and wishing wells.
43
I tried to absorb every sensation: listening to conversations in multiple
languages; watching bibliophiles and bookstore-lovers move around in
the several small, crowded rooms;
touching a few volumes here and
there and letting my hand caress railings and ladders and doorjams;
sniffing the funky atmosphere produced by the combination of age and
books and people packed closely together; doing everything but actually
tasting the books themselves.
“Excuse me, sir?”
I was up on the six-foot aluminum ladder leaning against the
corner Poetry section in the second room back.
I twisted around and
down for the voice. It was the smiling woman I’d met up front. She had
surprising news.
“I spoke with George and gave him your card, and he would like to
meet you,” she said in a British accent that should have given her
identity away, but I had become instantly focused on meeting the famous
George Whitman.
44
MEETING GEORGE WHITMAN
She led me through the many international browsers of all ages to the
back of the claustrophobic, book-filled shop and up the same narrow
wooden steps Linda and I had ascended during our first visit this
Tuesday past.
On the second floor we came to a bookcase-lined room which had
one padded window-seat – doubling as a guest’s bed each night – which
overlooked Notre Dame, 300-400 feet away, across a branch of the treelined Seine.
Its lure was impossible to resist;
I never came into
Shakespeare and Company when it was not occupied.
We passed through this inviting room out into a stairwell rising up
through the middle of the building.
Off the third floor landing we
stepped into Whitman’s apartment, consisting of 4-5 small, cluttered,
book-loaded rooms, this first one having a round, beat-up wooden table
45
in the center, a daybed against the left wall, both piled high with – what
else? – books.
That’s where I finally met the in/famous Whitman.
He was
wearing pajamas that looked as old as he was, and the many stains
indicated that it hadn’t been seriously laundered since, oh, maybe the
’68 student riots. He looked all of his 90+ years, with fly-away hair and
enough lines on his face admitting to every one of the accumulated pages
in his book of life.
“What’s your name?” he barked. “Do you have a card?” (He had
already been given my Acorn business card by the blonde.) “Are you a
vegetarian?”
Before I could reply, he growled, “I’m George Whitman, and from
your card I see that you’re in the business, too.” Then the Bookseller of
Paris reached out his long-nailed, bony hand to shake mine with a firm
clasp, belying his age.
Youthful energy blasted out of his startlingly electric-blue eyes,
and we jumped into a conversation about why I was in Paris, and how
meeting him was such a highpoint for me. It was sincere, and I knew
from reading Mercer’s book that Whitman loved adulation.
George – there was never any question about calling this
American-in-Europe entrepreneur anything but “George” – thanked me
for visiting him, and said that he’d just awakened when his daughter had
told him about my desire to meet him.
His daughter? His daughter?!
The pretty young blonde with the inherited blue eyes and raisedin-England accent had been Sylvia Beach Whitman!
She’d given me no indication it was her father I’d asked to meet, or
that it was her father that she led me to in bookstore heaven.
Before I could respond about how personable and professional she
had been – I wasn’t going to admit to her serious attractiveness – he
46
turned and shuffled along in ratty slippers, leading me toward the hall
connecting this front room to the back ones.
At the first door to the left, he threw a scrawny pajama-ed arm out
toward the room and informed me, “You can have that bed there!”
And
continuing as though his offer were a done deal, he said, “You can stay
with us for a while and work in the store.”
I hadn’t known the legend for five minutes and I’d been offered a
bed and a job! Just as his reputation had it: spontaneously friendly and
welcoming to all...at least initially.
I was to soon see how quickly his
moods could turn, though fortunately not with me.
My offered room was large by Parisian standards.
However, at
least half the space was filled with dozens of haphazardly stacked/piled
boxes and manila folders of what turned out to be archival material. The
walls
were
covered
with
overlapping
Shakespeare
&
Company
memorabilia, including many signed headshots of noted writers who had
visited Shakespeare & Company, as well as various posters the store had
printed over the years to promote George’s passions:
poetry readings,
author appearances, the bookshop, and socialism. A large, unmade bed
was in the right corner, adjacent to the door. Clutter was omnipresent,
as was the sense of Shakespeare and Company history.
If I’d been on my own, I would have been tempted to accept
George’s hospitality, despite the lack of amenities – there’s no shower
outside of George’s room, and the only toilet in the place according to the
Mercer book was…um, not up to Martha Stewart’s pre-prison standards.
But as I informed my would-be host, “I’m with my wife.”
“It’s a double bed!” he laughed, “the only one in the place!”, hoping
to persuade me to join his ever-fluxuating staff. “It’s unusual we have
any vacancies, so that’s your bed!”
We were still in the book-lined hallway outside “my” room, and I
was looking longingly at all the beat-up boxes and files. I asked George
hopefully, “Are you writing a history of Shakespeare and Company?” As
47
a bibliographer of the literature of American bookselling – he was
American after all, I was eager to add a Whitman entry to my research
project.
“No,” he said dismissively with a wave of his hand, “but in here I’ve
got some other things I’ve written to show you.”
Hmmm, maybe something else for the bibliography.
As he searched through hundreds of books on the crammed hall
bookshelves, I asked him about how he saw his significance to the book
world.
“Oh,
I
haven’t
done
much,”
he
declared
modestly,
distractedly…and mistakenly.
“It’s all out of print,” he said, referring to his written works,
ignoring the intent of my question, “but I might have something in
here…” and he started finger-walking the titles on the packed shelves.
The first thing he pulled out was a thick black binder, which he thrust
into my hands.
“Take that and read those biographies of the people who have
stayed here,” he commanded. “One hundred thousand young would-be
writers have stayed here over the years, and each one has to write at
least a one-page biography of their lives if they want a bed in the store.”
Each hopeful young writer had the privilege of being associated
with an important institution in the literary history of Paris. And George
wanted them to pursue their dream;
he strongly encouraged them to
apply themselves to their writing, even as he understood the seductive
lures of Paris. Whitman was a writer’s bookseller, as Sylvia Beach was
before him.
George kept rifling through the files and books along the Hall of
Bookcases , pulling out a couple of items for me. “That’s a brochure we
did a while back,” he said, handing me the full-color, laminated 12-page
accordion-fold item, which I’d already bought downstairs for five Euros.
48
He then handed me “A Remembrance of Flings Past”, saying, “You can
have this. It has a couple of essays about the bookstore by its writer
from when he stayed here.” I asked him to inscribe it to me.
“It already has the author’s inscription!” he exclaimed impatiently.
“But I’d like you to sign it to me.” Grumbling, he did so, with my
omnipresent Pilot Precise V5 blue pen.
Still rummaging through the books on the wall, he said that he couldn’t
find something particular he wanted to give me:
a copy of “The
Tumbleweed Hotel”, which is one of the informal names he’s called the
store, calling to mind the number of literature-loving transients, who,
like tumbleweed, blow in and out.
One regular visitor to Shakespeare and Company is Whitman’s
longtime close friend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The poet had become fast
friends with Whitman back in postwar Paris, when Whitman had begun
hustling English-language books. A few years later he had opened his
own to-become-famous-itself bookstore in San Francisco: City Lights.
49
When I noted a signed photo of Ferlinghetti in the hall, he thrust
his face at mine and demanded, “Do you know Larry?”
I assured him that I hadn’t had the pleasure, though I’d sold a lot
of his books in the many bookstores I’ve run.
Quickly George invited me to come back on Tuesday.
“Larry’s
going to be in town for about 48 hours, and we’ll probably go to my
favorite restaurant, Brasserie Balzar, where I like to take my oldest
friend,” he informed me. “You should come and meet him!”
Years ago I named one of my cats Ferlinghetti because I admired
the poet’s work. I’d visited City Lights on both occasions I’d been in the
City by the Bay, including just this past June.
What a treat to have
visited two of the most noted bookstores in the world within three
months of one other, especially considering their sister-bookstore status
based on this trans-Atlantic friendship and colleagueship between
George and Larry.
Ferlinghetti was another hero to me, both for his bookstore and his
writing. What a thrill it would be if I could meet Ferlinghetti and have a
photo taken of us three booksellers.
I mentally filed that date away to share with Linda, as I was trying
to do with everything. I had my little notepad out and – with Whitman’s
OK – was scribbling as fast as I could, whenever I could, without being
rude.
A young woman named Catherine popped into the hallway, and George
turned around and abruptly barked, “Where’s that letter that came today
for me?”
Caught off guard, Catherine said that she wasn’t sure.
“You didn’t steal it, did you?!” George demanded, not in a joking
tone. Whitman has a mercurial temperament, and can get worked up
instantly about something, and just as quickly get over it. He’s a bit like
50
a McDonald’s French fry: a bit crusty and salty on the outside with a
soft interior.
While George pointed me into “my” room, Catherine went to search
for the requested letter.
I didn’t know what to focus on first. Part of me wanted instantly to
offer to help organize the very historic Shakespeare and Company
ephemera in all the jumbled files:
55 years of the history of the
bookshop and Hall of Fame writers who have visited.
It was a
documentation of much of the half-century of Parisian literary events. A
biographer’s wet dream.
And I fantasized about being that lucky
biographer.
51
A few minutes later Catherine was back, producing the requested letter
with a roll of her eyes at me.
I liked her right away, and smiled
conspiratorially back.
George grabbed the letter, waved it in the air as though drying the
ink, then thrust it at me, saying that it had come from a woman in North
Carolina, who had visited him recently, and had written to say thanks.
He wanted to remind me of his fame.
He climbed onto the unmade double bed, laid back, and urged me
to have a look around.
“Do you mind if I take a couple of pictures?” I boldly asked.
“I don’t care,” he shrugged.
As George was reading the letter, I asked Catherine how long she’d
been at the store, assuming from her relationship with George that it had
been a while.
In her Manchester accent, she told me that she and her boyfriend
David had arrived just five days earlier, and would be leaving the
following day. “But I’ve become kind of like the house-mother to George
and everyone.”
I photographed her, then turned to try and catch the room on this
one chance I had. Click: George reading the letter in bed. Click: the
wall of posters and pictures. Click: the archival clutter.
Only when I reviewed the photos that evening on my laptop – I
prepared a digital slide show of each day’s adventures for Linda every
evening, sitting at the small table in the window of our apartment
overlooking the night-lit south-facing of Notre Dame – did I discover with
great regret that the photos weren’t as sharp as they should have been; I
apparently had been a bit too nervous/excited to hold the camera still
enough, rather unusual for the photographer I try to be.
52
As George began to get up, I turned to see if he needed help. I was close
enough to spy a book tucked between his unwashed pillow and the
postered wall. Do I believe my eyes?! It was the banned Jeremy Mercer
book, “Time Was Soft There”, the very book I’d asked for downstairs on
that first day and was told they weren’t allowed to carry it because
George didn’t like it.
Yet here it was, within reach each night, with pride of place.
I had to say something, albeit casually, “George, I see that you
have a copy of the Mercer book.”
Playing innocent of the knowledge
already gained from one of his “staff”, I inquired, “What do you think of
it?”
He exploded, “It’s full of god-damned lies!”
I didn’t respond, wanting to see how this played out.
“There’s a fabrication on every page!” he raged.
“He said I
proposed to a 13-year-old, and that’s not true!”
53
TEA WITH GEORGE
A bit later British Catherine came in where George and I were talking
and noted that it was nearly time for the weekly Sunday tea.
“We can’t have a tea party today!” Whitman yelled at her.
“Why not, George?” she patiently replied, knowing that tea was
served every Sunday afternoon to invited guests and in-house writers.
He flung his arm out at the room with the overflowing table and
said, “Just look at the place! It’s a god-damned mess! This should have
been cleaned up!” Catharine tut-tut-ed him and said that they’d be able
to clean things up just fine.
Shakespeare & Co. has been hosting a Sunday afternoon tea for
years, firmly entrenched in the Parisian tradition of literary salons.
A
traveler could invite herself to tea here, knowing of George’s Sunday
hospitality, or he could be invited by one of the here-for-today staff to
join the other tea-takers upstairs.
I offered my help in cleaning things up for today’s tea.
George
seemed to be mollified, though no less grumpy.
“All these boxes need to be moved from this couch!” he growled,
and picked one up easily, defying his 90 years.
heavy box and followed him into “my” room.
I picked up another
We brushed aside some
files – their contents spilling onto the cruddy floor – and set the boxes
down.
“I must do something about these files,” he muttered, which is
exactly what Mercer recorded Whitman saying constantly when he was
living/working/writing at Shakespeare & Co. Mercer, like me, knew that
those files contained amazing treasures that needed to be organized
while George was still around to help and to offer insights into the
accumulated notes, which only he could expand upon.
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At four o’clock, several people wandered up the staircase and took
seats on the assembled motley chairs and on the three raggedybedspread-ed couches, which at night were writers’ beds.
About 12
people were there, including George, who was lively and friendly, his
grumpiness gone.
The “kitchen” was merely part of a hallway from the third floor
front room to the back rooms. A small black – or was it just blackened
from never-cleaned usage? – stove had been installed many years ago,
and now was less than Donna-Reed-clean. On the cupboards at eye level
were pasted signed photos of Nat Hentoff and James Baldwin and others,
curling from age and heat and grease from the stove below.
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Roaches were everywhere, bold roaches that had acclimated to the light
and footsteps, drawn to the third floor kitchen like booklovers were to the
bookstore downstairs. Just walking through the hallway was an exercise
in ignoring the slum-like conditions.
George’s living quarters made
graduate student apartments look like the Ritz.
And Linda and I know what the Ritz is like, having visited the
fabulous, opulent hotel earlier in the week. We had read Sylvia Beach’s
description of Hemingway liberating her apartment building’s rooftop
from snipers at the end of the Paris occupation before he declared that
he was going off in his jeep to “liberate the cellar of the Ritz”, so we
decided to at least walk through the hotel – if they’d even let us in – and
have a drink at the famous, liberated bar.
Hemingway would have been even more shocked than we were at
the sign outside the Ritz’s bar that bore his name; it said that the bar
didn’t open until 4pm, and that men were required to wear a jacket.
No
drinking in the bar until 4?! A dress code? When the already-famous
writer strutted into the bar in 1944 in fatigues and with his machine
gun, was he stopped and offered a loaner jacket and a hat-check ticket
for his weapon?
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Whitman’s hot, thin tea was ladled from a large church-kitchen-sized
urn into a strange assortment of cups that would have been discarded by
any thrift store in America. But the atmosphere of congeniality was so
strong that no one seemed to care, though as I was looking around
making mental notes for this store-y, I saw several people glance quickly
at the cups, take a sip, then look inside the cup at whatever liquid was
passing for tea. It didn’t matter what the taste was; George’s generosity
of spirit and welcoming of strangers transcended any less-less-than-high
tea flavor in our cups.
Sylvia had come up briefly, but her duties downstairs in the
bookstore kept her from sitting and joining us for conversation. I had
been hoping to chat with her a bit.
Most of the current writers-in-residence showed up for the famous
tea.
They told fascinating stories of how they came to be staying at
Shakespeare and Company, including one young Australian woman who
had come to Paris only after reading Mercer’s book, knowing that she’d
have a place to crash, no matter how anything else might work out.
Several at the tea-table had come into the store as customers recently,
and were fortunate enough to have been invited up into the inner
sanctum of this unique Paris bookstore.
The conversation around the room was quite international in
focus. A middle-aged couple who had just returned from Romania were
interested in my stories about our year there under communism in 1984,
the ultimate year of Big Brother.
As the tea broke up, George waved me over to his chair. “Why don’t you
stay for dinner tonight?”
After seeing what the tea was, I had no idea what “dinner” might
actually be, but just to be asked was gratifying. I accepted and told him
that I’d have to go and tell Linda about it.
“Bring her along!” he said. “I’d like to meet her.”
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I was supposed to have met Lin at the next-door café around 5, but
it was 5:30 by the time I exited Shakespeare and Company and slid into
a seat in the Café la Bucherie, next to my journal-writing wife.
She could see that I was excited, with lots to tell, and I knew she
also would have tales of her afternoon alone in Paris at the film museum.
“You first,” she instructed me.
Pausing for effect, looking up from my Belgian beer she’d ordered
for me, I announced, “We’ve been invited to have dinner with George this
evening!! Both of us, upstairs in his apartment, and you wouldn’t believe
the afternoon I’ve had in there.”
I’d been told to come back up around 6, so I could give Linda only
an abbreviated summary of my experiences, before we were heading back
inside the unique bookstore.
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DINNER WITH GEORGE
“Dinner” was memorable.
Cabbage stew was served in bowls as chipped and mis-matched as
the teacups earlier.
Linda and I shared a bowl because there weren’t
enough to go around to the ten people privileged to join the aging
bibliopole. We also had to share a spoon for the same reason.
After we were all served our stews and spoons to share, George pulled a
bottle of red wine from a shelf behind him, and with a flourish opened it
to goodtime cheers from us worshippers at the Shrine of St. George.
He sat in an unsteady folding chair in his seasoned pajamas, wild
long hair nearly falling into his stew.
He casually told us that he
trimmed his stringy hair by setting fire to it, letting it burn an inch or so
off, then smothering the fire with a towel.
Someone asked him if he was a smoker, aware that so many
Europeans indulged in the weed.
“I use to smoke all the time,” he said, looking up at the questioner,
stew dribbling down his elderly, jutting chin. “But I got (tear-) gassed in
the ’68 riots, because I allowed my bookstore to be a haven for the
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demonstrating students. The police came and stormed the store and my
lungs inhaled so much gas that I went to the hospital. They told me I’d
have to give up smoking for at least 15 days, so I just decided to stop
altogether, and haven’t smoked since then.”
Downstairs on Tuesday I’d asked for the name of the black cat
lounging on the books, and had been told that it was “Kitty”. Over our
strangely delicious stew I asked George about Kitty and told him about
our Siamese named Biblio who visits Acorn.
He growled, “I like Siamese cats. But I’m a dog man! But I’ve had
both cats and dogs in the store, and have had several of each stolen,” he
complained bitterly, “including one tied to a tree out front!”
I was hard-pressed to make notes as fast as George was talking,
not wanting to miss any of the details.
Sylvia did come up for part of the dinner, and sat next to me,
perched on the arm of a sofa, no more chairs being available. She was
talking about having taken a long weekend away from the store for a
little holiday to visit her “mum” in London, and to buy books for the
store. “It was only three days, but I couldn’t wait to get back!”
You could never tell when George was paying attention to any
given conversation around the table, but he responded to his daughter’s
comment by saying, “The bookstore really belongs to Paris, but don’t tell
my daughter that!”
After an hour the dinner broke up when Sylvia said she had to head back
downstairs to look after things. It seemed to be the signal for all to give
their thanks and head out.
Linda and I helped Catharine and George carry the fragile cups,
bowls, and wineglasses to the heaped-up dirty sink. I knew my insider
time was about to end, and I was trying to suck up every impression for
later notes.
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“Do you mind if I have a picture taken of you and me together?” I
asked Whitman.
He gruffly agreed, then led me to the second floor,
where he insisted we pose for the photo in front of what is called The
Mirror of Love.
“It’s the part of the store I’m proudest of,” he told me as we settled
onto a shelf/bed in front of it. Unable to hold still for the picture, he
talked about the Mirror, about how it was the focal point of the store
with its many photos and messages posted everywhere. He pointed out
two letters posted on it.
One letter from an American couple noted all the young semiitinerant writers staying at the bookstore, and then stated that their son
had been bi-polar, and had committed suicide.
The letter continued,
“After we visited Shakespeare and Company, we believe that if he had
come here, he would still be alive.”
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We then descended into the commercial chaos of the bookstore. I had
several gifts from George clutched in my hand, with a plan in my head to
obtain signatures of both of the Whitmans.
Sylvia was staffing the storefront with Kitty. She thanked me for
coming to the store and spending some time with her father. I asked her
to
sign
the
booklet
she’d
produced,
“Shakespeare
&
Company:
Biography of a Bookstore in Pictures and Poems”, which she did with a
laugh.
“He’s always the one who gets asked for an autograph!”
thrusting an elbow toward her dad.
I had one special book I wanted both to sign:
my own carried-
across-the-ocean copy of Sylvia Beach’s “Shakespeare and Company”.
Which they did with some amusement. “No one’s ever asked us to
sign this book,” Sylvia said with a dazzling smile. I wished I’d had one of
my first editions with me instead of the trade paperback reprint, but the
moment was too wonderful for that distraction.
Their signatures in that book symbolize the bridge between Sylvia
Beach and her Shakespeare and Company (1919-1941) with George
Whitman and his store of the same name (1953-2006), and again with
the next generation of Shakespeare and Company’s ownership, Sylvia
Beach Whitman (2004-?).
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Linda and I left then, with many thanks both ways.
George in his
pajamas was talking to a pretty young Czech woman and waved farewell.
Two days later I presented myself back at Shakespeare & Company in
the subdued hope that I’d get to meet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as invited
by Whitman on Sunday.
“He and Ferlinghetti went out to lunch at two,” replied Melita, one
of the writers we’d met at the dinner.
“We have no idea when, or if,
they’ll be back,” she concluded with a smile and a shrug.
I was a little disappointed, but in Paris it’s hard for a traveler to
stay disappointed long.
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A LAST FAREWELL
We continued our nightly routine of passing by Shakespeare and
Company on the way to our Notre-Dame-view flat, and I stopped in
during the day occasionally.
On our next-to-last day in the city, before we headed out to Annecy
in the French Alps, I stopped in to say goodbye to anyone around that I’d
met, “Cheers”-like, with everybody knowing each other’s name.
Sylvia was setting the boxes of Sale books out as part of opening
the store.
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I offered to help, but Catharine and David showed up to earn their beds.
A young, red-headed Irishman – tall, thin John – was there taking his
leave of the store, and was talking in a thick brogue with Sylvia when I
arrived. She seemed to enjoy his morbid sense of humor. He had been
serving as the paid Night Manager, and was leaving for Dublin as soon as
the taxi arrived.
“See, George? There’s the job for you right now!” laughed Sylvia.
I fantasized for a few seconds: Hmmmm…being paid to help run
the renowned bookstore in the center of Paris?
But I knew I couldn’t
choose poverty in a famous bookstore in Paris over Linda and Columbus
and the Acorn Bookshop. Could I?...
I took a few more pictures, and left, with a little sadness in my
heart that I would not be the second George of this Parisian bookstore
As we walked past Shakespeare and Company one last time around
eight, Linda said “Look!” and pointed at the high window over the
bookshop.
There was old George, leaning out of the third-story window in the
golden light of evening, peacefully gazing down at the store’s esplanade
where a dozen or so bargain-book browsers enjoyed the warm Sunday
air. He then raised his head to look across the Seine, over to Notre Dame
and its large parvis, the scene of so much activity in Parisian history.
George Whitman and his famous bookstore had become a worldrenowned, distinguished part of that long history.
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REFERENCES:
•
“James Joyce’s Letters to Sylvia Beach” by Melissa Banta &
Oscar A. Silverman (1987)
•
“Shakespeare & Company” by Sylvia Beach (1959)
•
“Literary Cafes of Paris” by Noel Riley Fitch (1989)
•
“Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary
Paris in the Twenties & Thirties” by Noel Riley Fitch (1983)
•
“Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare &
Company”. by Jeremy Mercer (2005)
•
•
“The Book-Hunter in Paris” by Octave Uzanne (1893)
“Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man”, Sycomore Films, 2006.
Available online at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=55742844084271187
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