George Whitman, 1913-2011

This is almost two months overdue, but I only discovered yesterday that George Whitman, founder of the Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris, passed away on the 14th December 2011.

I was extremely saddened to hear of his death, as to me, he seemed to represent almost magical qualities; his profound love of literature, and of people, appeared to transcend even the glimmer of a bygone era, and seemed only to exist within the pages of the novels that he so fervently read throughout his life.

If anybody has visited Shakespeare & Co (right opposite the Notre Dame in Paris... I stumbled across it in 2008 quite by accident), then I'm sure you'll agree with me, that to call it an 'Aladdin's Cave' doesn't even begin to describe it! Books on the floor, books on the chairs, books on tables, outside the shop, next to the sink, on top of the piano (which, incidentally, had a large sign attached to it saying 'PLAY ME')... books EVERYWHERE. I felt like a child on Christmas day! Of all the books and all the words contained inside that shop, 'organised' probably wasn't one of them! I emerged two hours later, breathless with awe and with dust covering my hands, as if I'd dived head-first into a pool of pages and paddled around happily, completely intoxicated and bemused.

I'd heard that if you were in the shop at 4pm on a Sunday, then George would invite you upstairs for tea and cake. I'd also heard that if you turned up on his doorstep, he would offer you a mattress from underneath the bookshelves and give you free lodgings, provided that you helped out in the shop for 2 hours a day, and read a book every day also (and after research, I've found all these things to be true!) George seemed to have lived, through my naive eyes, a wildly poetic life; living with a Mayan tribe, travelling on foot across the American continent for seven years, and has shared "tea and a pancake" (to quote the shop's website) with many prolific writers who came to visit Shakespeare & Co (including, I've read, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway and Arthur Miller). I did spot him on one of my visits to the shop, during a reading by Breyten Breytenbach, but of course, I was too shy to approach him!

I'm aware that I've been babbling on for a while now! I can't even begin to describe how inspiring I've found George Whitman's approach to his work, life, and treatment of others. If you have the time, please do read these obituaries by The Telegraph and The Guardian, here and here. If I could leave you all with a question, it would be; have you ever visited Shakespeare & Co before, and what were your impressions of it? If not, then tell us about an exciting bookshop discovery you've made on your travels!

I will end with the W.B Yeats quote, which is painted above the door in the upper floor of the shop; "Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise."

Thank you, George.