Shakespeare & Co, part deux

Click on images for enlarged views.


I posted about Shakespeare & Co in the first post on this blog back in April 2006. Don't confuse this bookstore with the bookstore chain in NYC that is not connected but borrowed the name. My daughter happened upon it this summer.

This one is across the Seine from the Notre Dame cathedral on the Left Bank. Mr. George Whitman is a character and a half in his 90s who has lived in Paris most of his life. He owns this quirky bookstore and keeps it as earthy and vibrant as he seems to keep himself. (Does he really "trim" his hair with flames from a candle?)

George Whitman (photo from the Shakespeare & Co website)

If you click and enlarge this image of a blackboard, you can read what George Whitman has written.

He and his daughter Sylvia run the place. They invite nomadic writers and students to sleep in a bed upstairs and sweep up or tidy piles of books for their keep (and you must read a book a day).

They also invite famous writers to read from their works, Henry Miller among them some time ago.

In May 2006 I visited the bookstore as I do whenever I visit Paris. This time I joined a poetry group upstairs for a reading. The stairs are treacherous. There were probably 30 people in this little room. The pew I sat on against the wall was falling apart. I met a film attorney from LA who said she'd come speak to our film students, and listened to some terrific poetry.

Upstairs room for readings

Cecilia Woloch and a group of her poetry fans and students. (Click on her name and read a poem or two on her site; she's very good.)

Writing in Paris: Shakespeare & Co Bookshop

Photo of me courtesy Donica Detamore 2004

Because I am a writer and have a BA in English, I want the first post on this blog to be about Shakespeare & Co, the bohemian bookshop on the left bank of the Seine.

George Whitman (rumor has it he is related to Walt), now in his nineties, bought the bookstore in 1951, continuing the legacy of Sylvia Beach’s (publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses) Shakespeare & Company bookstore, which was around the corner. Whitman named his daughter Sylvia Beach Whitman. 

me with George Whitman in 1997
after I bought my book of Phillip Larkin poems

The motto of his shop is “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise,” which is painted above a doorway with a stack of books that reaches from the floor to the lintel.

Mr. Whitman, an American living in Paris for over half a century, has taken his bibliophilism to a philanthropic extreme by inviting writers through the decades to stay in his upstairs rooms above the bookshop. The Web site says he has hosted 50,000 writers! Aspiring writers help out around the beautifully cluttered bookstore to earn their rest on his pillow.

On a visit in 2004, I sat on a bench in front of the store while Donica shopped, and when Mr. Whitman appeared at his upstairs window, then opened it -- and his arms -- to me and asked “Do you have a place to stay?” it was clear he “knew” I was a writer and was honoring me with his traditional courtesy. (Thankfully my sister Ginnie was there to snap a photo.) I did already have another pillow in Paris, but I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to lodge with Mr. Whitman for a night or a week, sharing morning conversation over tea and a pancake before descending the stair to sweep up after last night’s reading. I think George Whitman is an angel in disguise.

George Whitman opening his arms and hospitality to me in October 2004 

Photo courtesy Ginnie Hart

Famous writers (Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin among them) have met with Mr. Whitman over the years, and some have read in the shop’s weekly readings.

The bookstore is packed with piles of books, without a clear organizational system except for sections of poetry, history, etc.

Each book you purchase is stamped with this logo that reads: Shakespeare & Co. Kilometer Zero Paris.

You can take a virtual tour of the bookshop. You'll notice that the Notre Dame cathedral looms just across the Seine when you exit the bookshop.



Shakespeare & Co Bookshop, 37 Rue de la Bûcherie