Last month I finally managed to make my book lover’s pilgrimage to the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company. Almost—but not quite—the legendary bookshop that first published James Joyce’s Ulysses (the original shop, owned by Sylvia Beach, was at a different location and closed for good in 1941), the modern Shakespeare and Company is still a unique bookshop.
The shop is staffed at least in part by a team of enthusiasts, who work there in return for the use of one of the beds that are tucked discreetly between the bookcases. Most of these beds are upstairs, along with most of the books, although this stock isn’t for sale; instead, it forms a sort of reference library, with all sorts of obscure goodies that can be looked at, even read, but not bought or removed. Hard-to-find author biographies and critical essays abound, and I’ve never seen so much Wyndham Lewis under one roof.
The prices, surprisingly for such a “destination” bookshop, were actually quite reasonable—not junk shop prices perhaps, but fair secondhand prices (unlike the bookshop around the corner, which had a great selection of battered Lawrence Durrell paperbacks but was trying to charge 8-12 euros each for them.)
So, what did I buy?
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G. B. Edwards
A Handful of Dust and The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Private Angelo by Eric Linklater
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
It’s a remarkable sign of the shop’s cult status that they still stamp the books they sell with their logo. It’s even more remarkable that I let them do it to the books I bought.
