Shakespeare & Company

After spending long hours in the university library, I feel tired. It is starting to get dark. I take my coffee from Café Strada and start walking under the thin rain. The weather is cool, but I am enjoying the tiredness of working for long hours as I walk. The warmth of the coffee warms my hands.

The smells coming from the shops I pass whet my appetite. As I pass a shop, I stop to avoid bumping into a few students who suddenly come out of the shop; I raise my head. The smells coming from inside this shop whet my appetite even more. I dive in without hesitation.

The dusty smell of old straw paper mixes with the old wood smell of the floor. Everywhere is full of books. The shelves cover all the walls. A middle-aged woman walks around with a list in her hand, climbs the ladder and places books on the shelves. She also sorts some books next to the cash register and says something to the young man standing at the cash register. The atmosphere is a warm mix of home, library and bookstore. I am a regular at the bookstore. The casual atmosphere of the bookstore is very suitable for Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue culture.

James Joyce is presented to the reader differently here. I don't understand why and I have no idea what I will discover after entering that shop. The sign at the entrance of the bookstore has the names of some cities: Paris, Bogota, Berkeley, ...

I am in Paris for the New Year's Eve that connects 1996 to 1997. The first days of my new life that began in Geneva. I am thrown into Paris in three and a half hours by train. Europe is experiencing a freezing winter. Everywhere is frozen. People are walking quickly in the streets to take shelter in a warm place.

On Saint Michael Boulevard, the frozen waters of the street fountain in front of the grand entrance to the Jardin Luxembourg are surprising. The water has turned into ice blocks as it flows. I walk without caring about the cold, but feeling it. I pass Notre-Dame. Now I have to make an excuse and go somewhere to warm up. A shop with books in front catches my attention for a moment. I see its yellow sign and the city names on it. The writing on the sign surprises me: Shakespeare & Company. I dive in immediately, as in Berkeley.

As soon as I enter the bookstore, I am fascinated by the bookshelves that reach to the ceiling and the air that smells of old paper. An elderly man is sitting in a corner. I can tell from his accent that he is American. I am trying to find a way to start a conversation. There are chairs in front of the huge shelves. People who enter the store take books from the shelves and sit down to examine them. When I start chatting, I learn that the man who walks around, sorts the books and places them on the shelves is named George. At that moment, I have no other thought in my mind than discovering the Paris branch of the bookstore that added color to my life in Berkeley. But, later I realize that this thought was wrong.

George opened the bookstore in 1951. He named it after Sylvia Beach, who had previously owned the bookstore under the name Shakespeare & Company . I pick up a few books and leaf through the pages. Why didn't I look for the bookstore with the sign saying Paris while I was in Berkeley and just happen to find it? I'm mad at myself, but never mind. I still stumbled upon it.

Sylvia Beach (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Beach )

People who reached adulthood during the First World War are referred to in some parts of the world as the lost generation. The reason for the lost generation is that the generation in question was left directionless and aimless due to the devastating effects of the war years on human life. However, there is a special point where the term lost generation finds a definition in literature. The term lost generation is used specifically for a group of American writers living in Paris in the 1920s.

Shakespeare & Co. (Source: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/history )

The day after I discovered Shakespeare & Company in Paris, I go back to the store. George is there again. His house is also on the floor above the bookstore. The conversation deepens more than the day before. When he sees that I have come two days in a row, he notices my interest and begins to tell the history of the bookstore in more detail. I enjoy what George tells me as I listen. What I listen to that day presents me with one of the unforgettable conversations of my life.

George Whitman (Source: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/history )

I buy two books, one by Sylvia Beach, telling the story of Shakespeare & Company. I read these books in the coming days and combine what I read in the book with what George told me. I literally live what I learned thanks to George.

Sylvia Beach was the first person to open a bookstore in Paris under the name Shakespeare & Company. The year is 1919. Shakespeare & Company becomes a place frequented by the literary figures known as the lost generation. Names such as Ernst Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Andre Gide, Paul Valery, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce would constantly engage in hour-long conversations in Sylvia Beach's bookstore. However, when James Joyce's Ulysses was published by Shakespeare & Company in 1922, the names James Joyce and Shakespeare & Company became synonymous.

James Joyce (Source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Joyce )

Paris was occupied by the Germans and Shakespeare & Company closed in 1941. Sylvia Beach was also arrested by the Germans for a time in 1943.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)

George opened what is now Shakespeare & Company under the name Le Mistral in 1951. George is also a close friend of Sylvia Beach and is part of the circle where Beach is located.

There is another person who completed his doctorate at the University of Paris in 1951 and was a close friend of George: Lawrence Ferlingetthi . He is also American.

Lawrence Ferlingethi (Source: https://citylights.com/our-story/lawrence-ferlinghetti/ )

During my Berkeley days, I would often go to the Italian neighborhood in North Beach, San Francisco. I would not leave Berkeley without going to City Lights Bookstore . Lawrence Ferlingetthi was an older man who, like George, always sat in the bookstore. I would chat with him every time I went. The conversations I had started without knowing who he was turned into something else when I found out who he was.

I had heard from Lawrence Ferlingetthi about the days he spent with members of the Beat movement such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lucien Carr. Although he did not accept that he was a member of the Beat movement, there was a strong perception about him that he was a part of the Beat movement. It was also claimed in the magazines of the time that the only exciting agenda in the calm world of the 1950s was the Beat. In San Francisco and Beat America, it was perceived as if it were another country and its people.

I had a book in my hand that contained interviews with representatives of the Beat Movement. Lawrence Ferlingetthi was one of those interviewed. I read the book with great pleasure, feeling Berkeley, San Francisco and Paris at the same time. I had not yet discovered Shakespeare & Company, but it was exciting to talk to someone who could almost be considered a member of a movement that had become part of world literature.

After I started talking to George in Paris and reading about Shakespeare & Company, I learned that George and Lawrence Ferlingetthi had met when George opened Le Mistral. Then I learned that George was George Whitman. The George Whitman I had read about but whose life story I had never known. City Lights in San Francisco and Shakespeare & Company in Berkeley and Shakespeare & Company in Paris opened a tremendous window for me. Both by reading and by talking to people who had witnessed history and were involved in literary movements.

When you go to Paris, you discover Viktor Hugo. When you walk around the streets of Le Marais, the air you breathe is full of Parisian aristocracy. You want to feel Quasimodo or Napoleon, but to feel the lost generation that lived in Paris so deeply with such coincidences offers another window to perspectives and memory.

George Whitman renamed Le Mistral Shakespeare & Company in 1964 in memory of Sylvia Beach. Sylvia Beach died in Paris in 1962.

In 2011, I picked up a copy of The International Herald Tribune. I was browsing through its pages. I came across a photo of George Whitman. The story of his life and his obituary were written next to the photo.

For various reasons, I went to Paris again and definitely stopped by Shakespeare & Company. Today, Shakespeare & Company is kept alive by a woman. Her name is Sylvia Beach Whitman. She is the daughter of George Whitman.