Shelf Life

Summer 1982 and I’m at Shakespeare & Company, a wondrous bookshop at 37 Rue de La Bûcherie, Paris. It’s on the South Bank, just shy of Notre Dame and I’ve been told to visit by my college lecturer, the writer David Martin. He has been a regular guest and he explained that if I asked the owner, George Whitman, he might let me stay. Unfortunately when I call, George isn’t around and there are no free spaces, but a friendly assistant tells me to call back in a couple of days. Sadly, my funds are limited, so I pass on the offer.

Later I find out that the lodgers are called Tumbleweeds and that they have amounted to thousands, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Anaïs Nin. The only stipulation is that you help in the shop, read a book a day and allow your mind to expand.

Back in ’82, I was already familiar with A Moveable Feast by Hemingway, so I knew that the original Shakespeare & Co was the bookshop that had published Ulysess and was frequented by Hem and F Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. From 1919-1940, Sylvia Beach had nurtured the vision, and then the name was borrowed with her blessing by Whitman for his location in 1953.

If you are prompt with your iPlayer, you can find a lovely BBC Radio 4 documentary on the shop here. Presented by Stuart Maconie, it pays tribute to “a library, commune, a bookshop, meeting place and a centre of learning”. George is no longer with us, but his daughter Sylvia walks us through the eccentric domain and explains that her dad created each room “like a man writing a novel”.

Her father had also insisted that there should be gaps in the shelving, so that browsers could see each other across the aisles and might even fall in love. Maconie speaks to lovers who have done just that. The programme is soundtracked by visitors to the shop, playing on the house piano. All this seems impossibly cute but is perfectly true. Chapter and verse. Such a place.