Please enjoy this Bookstrumpet special feature, the first offering in what will be an ongoing series of articles about bookstores around the world. There's no more legendary bookstore than Shakespeare and Company, located on the Left Bank of Paris, and nobody better to write about it than bibliophile Roy Burkhead.
Shakespeare and Company 2.0:
Festivals, Forward Thinking Ignite New Century for Age-Old Paris Bookshop
by Roy Burkhead
She’s back. After departing Paris in 1962, she has returned.
“She’s absolutely gorgeous; she’s beauty and brains, very intelligent,” said John Emerson. Emerson—an Andes, New York native—spent three months as the official Writer in Residence at France’s Shakespeare and Company bookshop. “She doesn’t weigh anything, so, she doesn’t make any noise: she was always busting me opening a bottle of beer in the shop, which is not allowed officially.”
At 25 years of age, she is a living, breathing allegory, and since the turn of this century, she has moved about literary Paris and the Left Bank’s Latin Quarter—invigorating this age-old shop with renewed focus.
She’s Sylvia Beach.
Well, sort of.
She’s Sylvia Whitman.
The youthful daughter of George Whitman, the 90-something-year-old Massachusetts native who started this literary oasis over five decades ago, carries the namesake of her predecessor—Sylvia Beach, who opened the original Shakespeare and Company a few streets away on rue de l’Odeon in 1921.
As part of this renewed focus, Sylvia and George invited nearly 30 international writers, authors, poets, and journalists to spend four days in June (of 2007) talking about the ins and outs of travel writing. And tout la monde was invited to attend the whole shebang for free.
All the World’s a Stage
As You Like It (II, vii, 139-143)
From June 15 to 18, the duo unveiled a taut literary canvas under a tent in the Rene Viviani Park next to the shop, located on the Left Bank opposite Notre Dame Cathedral. And using a sharpened Number 2 pencil, Sylvia threw out a fan of paint to create the bookshop’s second literary festival entitled, Travel in Words: A Four-Day Literary Celebration.
With a paint can full of French, English, Scottish, Canadian, Irish, Iranian, and American writers with at least 109 published books between them, Sylvia punched a hole in the bottom of it and splattered, poured, globed, swirled, and dripped its contents upon the canvas to form the festival’s public readings, panel discussions, writing workshops, documentary screenings, writing contest, and walking tours.
“Starting a festival was a natural decision,” Sylvia said. “Working at the shop, we were constantly talking about its history; we wanted to breathe new life into it—an institution filled with so many rich literary memories.
“So, we wanted to talk contemporary, do something new.”
American Composer David Amram was the featured performer and speaker at the first festival (Lost, Beat, and New: Three Generations in Literary Paris) back in 2003, and he wrote about the event in his book, Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.
“Sylvia spent months planning the entire eight days of non-stop events with two other young women her own age who ran the whole show!” said the composer of over 100 orchestral and chamber works and the writer of many scores for theatre and films, including Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate. “The three of them were extraordinary, and people from all over Europe, the USA, and Canada attended.”
“That shows how naïve we were,” Sylvia said of the event. “At 21, we didn’t realize how much work something like this takes, but it was a huge success.”
Back to 2007, Sylvia said that the prep-work for June’s festival was “exhilarating, exciting, and exhausting.”
With such themes as James Joyce’s Bohemian Paris, Left Bank Paris, and 300 Years of Café Life and Politics in Paris, walking tours launched each day’s activities, and the festival was book ended each evening with networking opportunities that include a reception at the bookshop, a dinner, a documentary screening at a near-by cinema, and cocktail parties.
Throughout each day, the panels, writing contest, readings, and presentations received an extra punch by the caliber of writers, poets, editors, teachers, and columnists in attendance—all offering the benefit of their experiences to those attending the festival.
“Before you even approach the marketplace, the key thing is to get your writing up to speed,” said Jonathan Lorie. “Think of yourself as an athlete: you need to train and practice and be capable of winning before you start to compete.”
Lorie is the director of the London-based travel-writing agency Travellers’ Tales, and he spent seven years as editor of Traveller magazine. In addition to judging the festival’s travel writing contest, Lorie served on a variety of panels and offered a separate travel-writing workshop on June 19 and 20 at the bookstore.
Travel Writer Rory Maclean said that aspiring travel writers should simply approach this profession, “by writing. Write. Write. Write. Then write some more. That’s my advice. And if they feel they’ve had enough, it’d probably be a better idea (for them) to do something sensible like becoming a dentist or raising rabbits.”
A Canadian-born author who lives and writes in London, Maclean was heavily involved in the festival, participating in panels and delivering the inaugural reading from his new book, Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India.
The panels proved to be one of the more interesting aspects of the festival.
“There are a lot of authors coming whose works specialize in the Middle East, as this is an important topic politically,” Sylvia said. “We thought we might explore this topic in a panel entitled, Travels in the Muslim World.”
Lorie said that “Travel writing is a hybrid form that mixes the story-telling techniques of the novelist with the real-life reportage of the journalist; those are vital sources for the writer to know and use. You also need to be adept at describing places, people, and atmosphere, which are the building blocks of our trade.”
This line of thinking was explored in another panel entitled, The Frontiers of Fact: Fiction and Non-fiction in Travel Writing.
And another key aspect of the festival was a travel photography exhibition by artist Gillian Thompson: “The exhibition was a documentary of my journey around the world without ever leaving Paris,” Thompson said. “It celebrated the diversity of cultures found within Paris.”
Thompson said she worked with Sylvia on the first festival, and she completed an artist residency at the shop in 2003: “Shakespeare (and Company) allows dialogue for artists from around the world and in the case of the festival introduced the topic for dialogue. It is important for many artists to have a community, politically and intellectually.”
Maclean said that “first and foremost, a literary festival brings an author to his or her readers; festivals remind writers that they are part of a living, changing community. It also gets us out of the house.”
According to Sylvia, there was no charge to the public for the festival.
“I couldn’t imagine charging a fee for any events,” Sylvia said. “With the help of our sponsors (Eurostar, Time Out, Granta, Travellers’ Tales, The American University of Paris, Mairie du 5eme, GoGo magazine, the British Council, Ernest & Julio Gallo, and Chateau de Fieuzal) we were able to break even, and that was our aim. I think these kinds of events should, as much as possible, be open and free to all.”
Whether a media mogul, international organization, or regular bloke, everyone has a chance to support the bookshop and help keep its next literary festival free with membership in the Friends of Shakespeare and Company.
“With budgets so small that shoestrings seem long, we’re always looking for ways to finance new jam jars, scratch pads, and pencils,” Sylvia said. “Rest assured that all of your money would go directly to supporting our biannual festivals.”
What a Piece of Work is Man!
Hamlet (II, ii, 115-117)
And Woman!
Sylvia manages the planet’s largest small business at 37 Rue de la Bucherie. She has everything but an apron, broom, and a little wooden bench in front of her shop.
Wait, there is a bench out front, after all.
When the store opens at noon, its many residents work hard and fast to transform the modest real estate in front of Shakespeare and Company into a makeshift Italian piazza, a place where people can mix and mingle, as well as eat and drink and rest and laugh and read, a place that has long-operated under George’s (everyone calls him George) motto of “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.”
The stone slab sidewalk and leafy trees conspire with the outside bookshelf, old-fashion chalkboard, and vibrant yellows and reds of the shop’s masthead to serve as a short of adhesive that binds this world together.
“We hold readings (outside) every Monday evening,” Sylvia said. “They are diverse: play readings, prose, poetry, and even sometimes a song or two.”
After studying Eastern History at University College in London, Sylvia returned to Paris just after the turn of the century to run the store for her dad, George. When talking about the differences in management styles between the two, Sylvia said, “Absolutely and not at all: We are different in our methods and similar in our outlook.”
The lifestyle—the personal credo—of no living human being has embodied so many action verbs and present participles while traveling so little physical distance in doing so, than that of Mr. George Whitman.
But it was no always so.
“I once expected to spend seven years walking around the world on foot,” George said. “I walked from Mexico to Panama where the road ended before an almost uninhabited swamp called the Choco Colombiano. Even today there is no road.”
But his road brought him to Paris and gave to the world his Shakespeare and Company bookshop, located just a few meters from Kilometre Zero. A small, bronze star embedded in the ground facing the main entrance of Notre Dame, Kilometre Zero marks the start of all French roads, and the star is considered the official center of Paris.
“When I opened my bookstore in 1951 (then called Le Mistral), this area in the heart of Paris was crammed with street theatre, mountebanks, junkyards, dingy hotels, wine shops, little laundries, tiny thread and needle shops, and grocers,” George said. “Over the years I have combined three stores and three apartments into a bookstore on three floors that Henry Miller called ‘a wonderland of books.’”
Thanks to the G.I. Bill, George stayed in Paris after the Second World War, studying French. After starting the shop in August of ’51, he changed the name to Shakespeare and Company in 1964 in honor of the late Sylvia Beach. Beach’s store served as an anchor for a generation of writers, including Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce; it was the first publisher of Ulysses.
Sylvia reflected on her namesake: “Sylvia Beach is a role model for all booksellers. I would have loved to have seen Paris in the 1920s and the group of artists that frequented her shop—it was truly a unique epoch.”
But she doesn’t need to see it because she is inside it, and since the 2003 festival, she has been working to get the shop shipshape.
“She’s good at her job,” Emerson said. “She’s more of a disciplinarian, which is needed there.”
“People have been asking us, ‘When is your next festival?’ But I needed to focus on the bookshop, on the stock, weekly events, fixing things—an endless task in a 17th century building,” Sylvia said. “So, I did not have the time or energy to start another project, but it felt right this year.
“George may have been secretly excited about the travel theme, as he wandered the world as a hobo and dreams of traveling, still.”
And George?
The following words may be found on his Web site: “Perhaps it is time for me to resume my wanderings where I left off as a tropical tramp in the slums of Panama.”
I Go, and It is Done; the Bell Invites Me
Macbeth (II, i, 62-64)
“Travel writing has always interested me, and it is a popular section at the bookshop,” Sylvia said. “Paris is a crossroads in Europe, and travelers are always passing through before their next stop to Amsterdam, Prague, Barcelona, and Berlin; so, it seemed a topic that was ideal for such a city and for such a bookshop.”
According to Sylvia, it is common for Shakespeare and Company to have a thousand visitors in a single day during the summer months. And in the summer of 2006 that number included three Americans from Texas, Georgia, and Colorado, each traveling through Paris, but all pausing at the bookstore to reflect and recharge before continuing.
“A few exchanges with local students in my extremely limited and quite bad French led us to Shakespeare and Company,” said Darrin McCullough. From Savannah, Georgia, McCullough said that he was passing through Paris with his art historian wife to attend a friend’s wedding in Toulouse. “As we entered, I was overwhelmed by one of my favorite smells: the distinctive, slightly musky odor of a serious bookstore; it was cramped, fairly dark, and packed with books—and I mean packed with books.”
Another traveler in the shop was Colorado Snowboard Instructor Gordon Sauer III: “It (the shop) was smaller than I had imagined with books in every corner of the store. You walk in and become surrounded by books, and the hallways are narrow, and you can go passed the register up the little stairs into the back portion of the bookstore, and then you become enclosed by books with little couches here and there to sit on and those ladders you find in libraries to reach the top shelf.”
Sauer said that recently he graduated from college, and the Paris stop was a short pause on his self-congratulatory backpacking trip across Europe.
“I’ve been to Paris for all kinds of reasons,” said Austin, Texas Resident Tom Adams. “Business trips, technical and travel shows, taking the family, but mainly playing tourist.”
A long-time member of the Ernest Hemingway Society, Adams said, “I have been to Shakespeare and Company three or four times. It is a great place to meet people and a ‘must see’ if you have any interest in American literature and Paris of the ‘20s.”
Sylvia said that the shop contains about a hundred-thousand books, shelved on three floors: “It’s mainly English, but I’d say twenty-five percent were in foreign languages.”
And before every one of them leaves the store, each will be sent out into the world with the shop’s official stamp of approval: a circular, black and white stamp with a mug shot of the Bard Himself in the middle with the words “Shakespeare and Company; Kilometre Zero Paris; Sylvia Whitman Foundation” around the edges.
“I remember being disappointed at first thinking that the woman who sold me my book had forgotten to stamp it because it wasn’t on the first page,” Sauer said.
“An old habit of mine when I find a unique book,” McCullough said, “is to get the stamp of the bookstore inside the cover. I have them from the Faulkner House, an edition of Shakespeare from Stratford, etcetera.”
Sitting at his window above the shop, George said, “I have let my imagination run wild with the result that a stranger walking the streets of Paris can believe he is entering just another of the bookstores along the Left Bank of the Seine, but if he finds his way through a labyrinth of alcoves and cubbyholes and climbs a stairway leading to my private residence, then he can linger there and enjoy reading the books in my library and looking at the pictures on the walls of my bedroom.”
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)
Three generations of writers have taken shelter under the name Shakespeare and Company, from the Lost Generation of Hemingway and Joyce to the Beat Generation’s Ginsberg and Burroughs and even reaching into the end of the alphabet with the Generation X-ers of today.
Regardless of the label and the date, the spirit of the name continues to give aspiring writers nourishment to go back to the blank page with enthusiasm.
“It’s magic to be there, to live in the same place that housed the likes of Ginsberg,” Emerson said. “It’s inspiring to be with other writers, to see them writing and to be surrounded by books and books and books, using typewriters and writing by hand; it’s a bohemian lifestyle that makes you feel like a writer.”
Since the shop opened, thousands and thousands of struggling artists and writers passed through the shop’s doors, exchanging a few hours of work each day for a safe spot to sleep and a quiet place to read and write.
“George likes to call the writers staying, ‘the tumbleweeds who float in and out,’” Sylvia said.
Looking to the shop’s history on its Web site, some of George’s motivation is revealed: “George had spent many years walking through South America and was touched by the hospitality of locals who would often feed and accommodate him.”
While George recently retired, he continues to sit as figurehead above his store, insisting that those staying at the shop write a short autobiography and read a book a day. (The shop’s Web site hints that George believes himself to be living in a novel.)
The Tumbleweed Emerson floated into the shop from Hollywood, where he worked for nine years as a freelance studio engineer on such popular television shows as Jeopardy, the Arsenio Hall Show, and Who’s the Boss.
“I got tired of the uncertainty of the business,” Emerson said.
And so he came to Paris, but he wrote a letter to the shop, first.
According to Sylvia, while there are some periods in the year when the shop may not have many residents sleeping in the beds, bunk beds, and benches, those interested should plan ahead.
“We need to meet people before saying yes (to staying with us); a letter of introduction is the number one way to approach us,” Sylvia said.
While at the shop, Emerson said that he saw many scenarios: “A guy with three friends walked in off the street and stayed, but he had stayed in the shop before. One guy just showed up with nothing, and he slept on the floor and rolled up in a rug to keep warm. If you plan on staying there, you need to bring a sleeping bag, unless you like rugs.”
But people rarely come to Shakespeare and Company exclusively to sleep.
Pas du tout.
“The most that ever stayed there was about eight people, mostly guys but a few girls,” Emerson said, “and we stayed up a lot of nights late (particularly late once it is realized that the shop doesn’t close until midnight), listening to jazz and drinking beer, wine, and whiskey.”
“And we had groupies,” Emerson said. “Just because we were writers and living at Shakespeare and Company, women would hang out with us. One day, we put up a sign: ‘Photo with Writers-One Euro,’ and someone paid a euro to have her photo made with me.”
Emerson said that they were not rowdy, but there were times when they would try Sylvia’s patience: “You’re not supposed to drink in the library, but we were in Paris, and as Hemingway said, ‘What’s a meal without wine?’”
In preparation for the travel writing festival, the shop solicited volunteers, an essential ingredient to the recipe that is Shakespeare and Company. The only official rules for those staying there are working two-hour shifts each day, but Emerson said that “I didn’t have to since I was the Writer in Residence, but I would still do chores, make keys for Sylvia, and so on.”
That tradition continued at the festival.
According to Sylvia, “a lot of the beds at the shop were filled by literature students, interns, and young writers who wanted to be a part of the festival by being helpers during the events; so, most of the places (in the shop) during the festival went to these people.”
But beyond any work (or anything else) that the tumbleweeds may be doing, Sylvia stressed her rules for the writers sleeping in the store: “Read, read, read; then, write, write, write.”
O, What Men Dare Do!
Much Ado About Nothing (IV, i, 19-21)
“Now that I am coming into my second childhood I wonder if all along I have just been playing store on one of the back alleys of history,” George posted to his Web site, “putting obsolete books on dusty shelves while people are riding the Information Superhighway from one end to another of the global village.”
When Shakespeare was writing just across the English Channel in the 1600s, George’s home was a monastery in the middle of a slum, and over the last 400 years the oak beams have twisted, plaster crumbled, and floor tiles rusted and cracked. (In fact, it was on the Bard’s 400th birthday in 1964 when George renamed his shop just as the Beatles were conquering the world.)
The centuries-old journey from monastery to a metabolized mixture of bookshop, library, writer’s residence, hostel, museum, and overall shrine saw the invention and introduction of much technology into the human experience.
The shop continues to evolve and adapt with plumbing and virtual wires.
“During my stay, Sylvia did put in a new toilet, which had been missing,” Emerson said.
According to Sylvia, “to others we are just entering the 20th century, let alone the 21st. But we will get there.”
Looking around the place, both the actual building and its virtual presence in the world, it is easy to understand that born not long after the end of the Disco Era, Sylvia is part of the up-and-coming new century, and her marketing methods reflect her commitment to technology.
Her arrival at the shop has witnessed the installation of credit card machines, surveillance equipment, a telephone—yes, a telephone, and even the Internet with shakespeareco.org
In the 1600s, a frere lampier would light the lamps in front of the building at sunset. George once said that he seemed to have inherited this role because for fifty years, he had been the shop’s frere lampier; Sylvia continues the tradition on the World Wide Web.
“Our Internet site is a communicating tool,” Sylvia said. “We try and update it as much as possible to encourage people to look again and again: the event listing is the main page to change regularly.”
The site contains all of the features people expect: short history of the store, a message from George, related articles on the shop, upcoming events: those sorts of things. In addition, there is a QuickTime video-powered 360-degree virtual tour that allows viewers to pan and scan throughout the store, including such popular areas as the Tumbleweed Hotel, the Sylvia Beach Memorial Library, The Writer’s Room, and of course, George Himself.
And using popular media to promote the store extends beyond its Web site.
“We get asked to do a lot of publicity work,’ Sylvia said, “and it is a pleasure when it is done well; we had no idea what to expect from the PIXAWAY team, but I think they did a great job.”
A French Internet media company, PIXAWAY creates monthly and bi-monthly television programming for the Net, as well as allows registered viewers to post their own videos. One of the episodes is entitled Paris in a Box and contains Paris features on restaurants, cabarets, Notre Dame, and Shakespeare and Company.
For a little under five minutes, viewers enjoy a video story narrated by Sylvia. Sitting on the bench in front of the shop, she gives the world the Nickel Tour.
The music in the background is hauntingly familiar since it was the same score used in the 2004 Warner Independent Pictures film, Before Sunset with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. The motion picture opens at Shakespeare and Company.
“This was a huge excitement for all of us,” Sylvia said. “We were happy to work with such a talented and creative film crew.”
The modern artist is living in a mechanical age, and as such, artists have created mechanical means of representing their art. Such was the case with Thompson: “I create art work that responds to the history of buildings. Originally, this is how I became involved with Shakespeare and Company. I completed an artist residency in 2003 and produced a sound installation. There were many hidden speakers installed in the bookshelves which played a collection of recorded voices, whispering the words of books back to unassuming customers.”
Looking forward, Sylvia said that her goals for Shakespeare and Company include creating a gallery, a film room, theatre space…a café.
“Not so many plans, really!” she said.
And she is developing her own blockbuster movie, as well.
“I am in the midst of making a documentary which will be on sale in the shop,” Sylvia said. “It is called Shakespeare, Pancakes, and Me, and it aims to tell the story of George’s life and the history of the bookshop, as well as portray a little of the magic that exists there.”
Now Go We in Content
As You Like It (I, iii, 139-14)
“When I arrived at the bookstore, I brought a gallon of Vermont Pure Maple syrup with me,” Emerson said in reference to the Sunday morning pancake breakfast in George’s upstairs apartment, which is mandatory for all residents. “He seemed to like it.”
Emerson continued.
“I remember one Saturday morning. I walked out of the bookstore and happened to look up. George was hanging out the window on the second floor, yelling ‘Pancakes, Pancakes!’ I replied, ‘George, it’s Saturday.’ And he said ‘Oh, it’s Saturday,’ and he disappeared back inside the window.”
And on the last day of the festival (a Sunday), visitors were encouraged to pause on their way to the Rene Viviani park and look up at that same window. Perhaps one or two saw Mr. Whitman’s silhouette up there with his raw ingredients, traveling along the topography of his tiny kitchenette like a great athlete or ballet dancer—mixing the flour and salt and whatnot out of the center of his body and creating what for half a century has been known as the Sunday breakfast, while just a few meters away, his daughter had a few raw ingredients of her own spread out over another canvas.
“Sylvia Whitman has always supported and valued the relationship between art and literature,” Thompson said. “We hope that people who came to the festival took away a greater sense of the environment that surrounds them. Beauty and inspiration comes in many forms, you’ve just got to be open and aware.”
Above it all, Amram’s words about the writing process may still be audible: “Be prepared to bring more to life than is expected or required, pay attention to everything and everybody, and have respect for the treasures of the past and beauties of the present.”
And as it should be, George gets the last words:
“I may disappear leaving behind me no worldly possessions—just a few old socks and love letters, and my windows overlooking Notre Dame for all of you to enjoy, and my little rag and bone shop of the heart. I may disappear leaving no forwarding address, but for all you know, I may still be walking among you on my vagabond journey around the world.”
A Kentucky native and longtime Nashvillian, Roy Burkhead has published his journalism, poetry, and prose in such publications as The Tennessean, The Hendersonville Star, The News Examiner, The Trunk, Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal, The Tennessee Writer, Popmatters.com, The Record, and the British Web journal Chapter&Verse, but he is perhaps best known as a promoter of the arts throughout middle Tennessee. After studying creative writing in London, England and earning a MFA in Writing from Spalding University in Louisville, Roy founded The Writer's Loft, a creative writing program at Middle Tennessee State University, as well as created, edited, and published the program's literary journal, The Trunk. Roy can be found online at:
http://personalpages.tds.net/~leslieor/index.htm
http://www.shelfari.com/rlburkhead
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/402/421
