By MARLISE SIMONS - New York Times - Published: December 14, 2011s
PARIS — George Whitman, the American-born owner of Shakespeare & Company, a fabled English-language bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris and a magnet for writers, poets and tourists for close to 60 years, died on Wednesday in his apartment above the store. He was 98.George Whitman at Shakespeare & Company about 1980.
He had not recovered from a stroke he suffered two months ago, his daughter, Sylvia, said in announcing his death.
More than a distributor of books, Mr. Whitman saw himself as patron of a literary haven, above all in the lean years after World War II, and the heir to Sylvia Beach, the founder of the original Shakespeare & Company, the celebrated haunt of Hemingway and James Joyce.
As Mr. Whitman put it, “I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life.”
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More than a distributor of books, Mr. Whitman saw himself as patron of a literary haven, above all in the lean years after World War II, and the heir to Sylvia Beach, the founder of the original Shakespeare & Company, the celebrated haunt of Hemingway and James Joyce.
As Mr. Whitman put it, “I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life.”
Full story.
1 comment:
When I was in Paris in 1993 on a writing job I sought out yjr bookshop Shakespeare & Co. The place was empty apart from a small and very old man with a white goatee beard sitting at the front desk reading the International Herald Tribune. I recognised him as the current owner of the shop, George Whitman (the great-nephew of Walt, I’d been told). I nodded at him, then looked at the shelves’ array of English titles. He suddenly called out and asked if he could help me. I said no, I was just browsing. He then asked if I was in Paris on holiday. I said no, it was business. He asked what sort of business I was in and I said –- nervously, since I was surrounded by great framed photographs of Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound and James Joyce -- that I wrote. Up to this point he had been looking at me while keeping his International Herald Tribune up before him like a shuttered window. Upon hearing the nature of my business, he put the paper down, leaned forward and asked what I had written -- perhaps he had some of my works in his bookshop? I said there was little chance of that as I mainly wrote for television. He picked up his newspaper and never spoke to me again.
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