Once a haven for modernist pioneers, the Shakespeare and Company bookstore is now a legendary landmark that will let you sleep in it—but only if you're writing an autobiography.
There is no bookstore in the world that can compete with the one in Paris Shakespeare and Company. Years 1919 it was opened at 12 rue de l'Odéon by an American expatriate Sylvia Beach. Until the Second World War, it was considered a literary oasis and a publisher with its own rules - it was the only one that fully published James Joyce's Ulysses, when no one else wanted him. It was closed by the Germans in 1941, and Sylvia was sent to internment. Ernest Hemingway he was supposed to come to the bookstore after the liberation of Paris and personally announced that he would reopen it, but this never happened. At least not in the same location or with the same owner. In the 1950s, Sylvia abandoned the official name of the bookstore To George Whitman, who, after her death, renamed his then bookstore Le Mistral Shakespeare and Company. She thus got a new home just a stone's throw from the famous Notre-Dame Cathedral (37 rue de la Bûcherie), but soon became the most famous bookstore in the world, as they used to gather there in the 1950s and 1960s literati of the beat generation. After the death of George Whitman, the bookstore was taken over by his daughter, Sylvia Whitman (named after the original owner).
Ernest Hemingway in front of the Shakespeare and Company bookstoreHome of famous writers and artists
Under the management of Sylvia Beach, the bookstore was home lost generations, writers and artists who wanted to escape the horrors of the First World War. Many like them F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, they found kindred spirits in the bookstore. Under the leadership of George Whitman, the bookstore welcomed a new generation of writers, including Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin and Ray Bradbury. William S. Burroughs he is said to have studied Whitman's collection of medical textbooks there for his book The Naked Dinner and even read it in the bookstore before it was finished. Today, you will probably find that they organize reading evenings there Zadie Smith, Martin Amis or Philip Pullman.
You can sleep in the bookstore
Under George Whitman, aspiring writers spent many nights sleeping on small beds around the bookstore. He appointed these people himself "tumbleweeds" (dry vegetation carried to and fro by the wind) as they rolled to and fro, hoping to write their best work. "Tumbleweeds" they always got free accommodation for one night, but only if they were ready to invest a few hours a day in writing, if they read one book every day and if they wrote a one-page autobiography. Ethan Hawke he is one of about 30,000 people who got this opportunity. When he arrived in Paris as a 16-year-old, he spent six days there.
“Tumbleweeds” at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore
More information:
shakespeareandcompany.com
