Remembering today, the legendary bookseller, proprietor of Shakespeare & Company (formerly Mistral Books) in Paris, George Whitman, who died on this day, December 14,
12 years ago now, at the venerable age of 98.
George Whitman’s obituary (from 2011 in The New York Times)
The Guardian obituary – here
George Whitman in The New Yorker – here
William F Hanna on “The Great George Whitman” – here – and here
The bare bones of the history (from Marcus Williamson‘s Independent obituary):
“In 1948, thanks to the GI Bill, which allowed returning soldiers to continue their education, he travelled to Paris and studied French culture at the Sorbonne. Whitman created his bookshop, Le Mistral, in a 17th century building on the Rue de la Bûcherie, close to Notre Dame, in 1951. This in turn inspired (his) good friend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, to open his own City Lights bookstore in San Francisco two years later. When Ferlinghetti and other poets of the Beat generation, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso, visited Paris, Whitman’s shop became their meeting place.”
In her comprehensive 2016 history of the store, Shakespeare and Company, Paris: The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, Krista Halverson recounts a memorable occasion with “the Beats” (Allen and Gregory and William were living at this time just around the corner at the fabled “Beat Hotel”):
“Ginsberg agreed to do a public reading of “Howl” at the bookshop, accompanied by Gregory Corso and a few other poets. On the afternoon of Sunday, April 13, 1958, crowds packed into the bookshop’s ground floor and spilled out onto its esplanade. The first poet to read was not an unequivocal success. Ginsberg and Corso personally objected to his work, calling it “uncommunicative junk”. To demonstrate what “real poetry” was, the two stripped naked to recite their poems. Two buff men purporting to be bodyguards flanked Corso as he read, and though Ginsberg was a bit drunk (he blamed his nerves) his “Howl” caused a sensation. Next, musician Ramblin’ Jack Elliott played songs and read from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which had recently been released. Burroughs had initially refused to participate, but once at the event, he was lured onto the stage by a young man, a bookshop regular, and gave what was said to be the first ever reading from Naked Lunch. “Nobody was sure what to make of it, whether to laugh or be sick. It was something quite remarkable,” said George.”
Gonzague Pichelin and Benjamin Sutherland’s 2003 documentary “Portrait of A Bookstore As An Old Man” (with memorable footage of George) can be viewed here:
From 2005 – Jeremy Mercer‘s affecting memoir, Time Was Soft There:
Shakespeare and Company is still very much alive. Sylvia Whitman, George’s daughter, took over the reins on her father’s death, (she had actually been co-managing the store with him since 2003) and has both updated and expanded it (both necessities), whilst remaining true and respectful to her father’s quirky, idiosyncratic, and finally transcendent, vision.
Long may it prosper!