Paris: ‘Shakespeare and Company’, is an iconic bookstore in the French capital here. It had published James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ in 1922. However, ‘Shakespeare and Company’ is appealing to readers for support. This has happened after pandemic-linked losses and France’s spring lockdown. It has put the future of the iconic Left Bank institution in doubt.
The English-language bookshop on the Seine River sent an email to customers last week. The email was to inform them that it was facing ‘hard times’ and to encourage them to buy a book.
“We’ve been (down) 80 per cent since the first confinement in March. So at this point we’ve used all our savings,” said Sylvia Whitman. She is the daughter of the late proprietor George Whitman.
Paris entered a fresh lockdown October 30 that saw all non-essential stores shuttered for the second time in seven months.
Since then, Whitman says she has been ‘overwhelmed’ by the offers of help ‘Shakespeare and Company’ has received. There have been a record-breaking 5,000 online orders in one week, compared with around 100 in a normal week.
Support has come from all walks of life: from lowly students to former French President Francois Hollande. He dropped by the bookshop overlooking Notre Dame Cathedral before the lockdown in response to the appeal.
Many Parisians contacted Whitman to donate to the bookshop without wishing to purchase a book. They wanted to share memories of falling in love there or even sleeping among its bookshelves.
“My father) let people sleep in the bookshop and called them ‘tumbleweeds’. We’ve had 30,000 people sleep in the bookshop,” Whitman informed. She added that it was one way the shop founders encouraged writers to be creative. Indeed, the motto on the shop wall reads: “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.”
The outpouring of loyalty is perhaps unsurprising for the place often described as the world’s most famous independent bookshop.
Founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, ‘Shakespeare & Company’ became a creative hub for expatriate writers. Among them were Ernest Hemingway, TS Eliot, F Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce.
Reflecting on Beach’s decision to publish ‘Ulysses’, Joyce’s groundbreaking novel of more than 700 pages, Whitman said: “No one else dared publish it in full. The company became one of the smallest publishers of one of the biggest books of the century.”
Joyce used to call Beach’s bookstore ‘Stratford-upon-Odeon’, merging the shop’s street address with Shakespeare’s birthplace. The Irish writer would use it as an office. “They all used her bookshop as a sanctuary,” Whitman said.
During World War II, as the shop’s story goes, Beach closed Shakespeare and Company in 1941. This happened after she refused to sell her last copy of Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ to a German Nazi officer. The bookstore re-opened in a different guise in 1951, with a new address and owner – George Whitman. The rest is history.
Since last week’s email appeal, it’s not only Whitman’s daughter who has been overwhelmed. Shakespeare and Company’s website, run by a small team, has been overloaded with book orders and donations.
Sylvia Whitman looked to the past for a solution to her new problem. Inspired by how the bookshop weathered the worldwide financial fallout from the Wall Street crash of 1929, she has set up a ‘Friends of Shakespeare and Company fund’ with a website link that supporters can click to send donations.
While the bookshop is a Paris institution, Whitman still maintains her eccentric and down-to-earth spirit. She seems to have inherited it from her late father, George.
At several points in an interview with this agency, Shakespeare and Company’s resident dog, named Colette, interrupted with barking. Whitman said it was because Colette had a strong opinion on certain matters.
Shakespeare and Company’s financial troubles didn’t begin with the coronavirus pandemic.
The French capital in recent years has been a theater of calamities that caused lasting problems for small shops and businesses that rely on out-of-town visitors — from terrorist attacks and anti-government protests to the devastating April 2019 fire that closed Notre Dame Cathedral.