Shakespeare & Co.

So, it's been a while since I've put up anything too exciting on the blog - because I've mainly been hanging out with friends - movie nights, cinema, eating together: the kind of thing that no one needs to see posted on the internet. But, I've neglected to post about a whole other aspect to my life in Paris which has recently taken root, grown and blossomed. 

Outside the Shop

Right at the beginning of my blog [here] I posted about The Shakespeare & Company, after having been there twice before on trips to Paris. The first time I went to the shop, it was as a tourist, and I treated it as such. I enjoyed looking around, but it bothered me to find that in the old typewriter upstairs there was no ribbon, and I began to imagine that the whole shop operated as a sham, not a "socialist utopia masquerading as a bookshop" as Whitman, the founder liked to quip, but rather the other way round. On my third visit I was still wavering over the genuineness of the shop, but I soon realised there is a depth to The Shakespeare and Company that confirmed its authenticity in my eye.

 

In the studio upstairs.

As opposed to other French bookshops I've been to, which are understandably businesses with books to sell & money to be made, the bookshop really is a project of the heart. It's a living, beating hub which embraces current authors as much as keeping old traditions alive: the bookshop still welcomes "Tumbleweed" authors who live in the shop above in exchange for helping out for 2 hours a day in the shop. They've recently taken to busking outside on the banks of the Seine, so the front of the shop is filled with guitar music and at the back, the tinkling of piano keys drifts down from customers who are invited to play the upright piano upstairs. The admiration and affection that all who work for the bookshop is real, and for me that overrides everything.

Flowers in the park outside the bookshop. Virginia Woolf painted on the window upstairs.

And now, I've joined the ranks. The shop has an internship/volunteer system: 4 hours of unpaid work a week is your ticket into the centre of this rabbit warren of a shop. It might sound like a raw deal, and in certain ways it is. You really have to enjoy being in the shop, to be the kind of person who might have spent 4 hours amongst books in any case. The bit I like is getting to know all the interesting people from all over the world who work there: the staff, Tumbles and other volunteers. I like getting to talk to the customers for whom The Shakespeare & Company is a dream-come-true, who leave notes and photos around the speckled mirror upstairs or slipped into books. I like being able to go up into George Whitman's old apartment, which has apparently remained almost unchanged over the passage of time. And the other day I was asked to take the shop's resident dog Colette for a walk, with an old belt hastily fashioned into a leash. This very much sums up the syncopated rhythm of the bookshop life. 

You aren't allowed pictures in the bookshop, so here's one I nicked off the internet :)

I really do think that everyone comes away from The Shakespeare & Company with their own story to tell, and George Whitman's statement that the shop is a "novel in three words" is something I can side with. It's not for everyone, but I'm loving my time helping out there so far!

À Bientôt !
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