The People of the Book
03.15.2011 From Rue Lagrange, we turn a corner. Suddenly, Notre Dame looms like a great ship before us, directly across the Seine. We pass the Square Réne Viviani, named for a WWI-era French prime minister, but once the garden of l’Église St-Julien-le-Pauvre, where St Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Villon and Rabelais all prayed, in the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.
Here we are at 27 Rue de la Bûcherie, in front of this odd little bookstore that is so numinous for us. Shakespeare’s portrait is painted twice on the wall outside. Two young Americans sit at a table outside intently chatting (I hear their accents as we pass).
Out here on the paving stones between the store and the Seine is where Richard read his poems one day in spring of 1997 when we were here on our honeymoon. In 2006, on an evening when we’d just arrived in Paris, the two of us read poems together in the small intimate room upstairs.
I remember the dazzling warmth of Sylvia Beach Whitman, who had just taken over ownership of the bookstore from her father, George Whitman. She was like a fairy, delicate, blond, and full of light. Though she seemed far too young to run a bookstore, it was clear she would be very good at it.
This year, we enter as if visiting an old friend in our home town—Paris is our home town now. It’s 8:30 p.m., and chances of Sylvia being here this late are slim. But there she is to the left of the door, small, blond, radiant as ever. We exchange greetings, chat.
I ask her about my gift certificate. She dashes back to her office in the antiquarian book room, and returns: here it is, converted from dollars to Euros. Six weeks I’ve waited, gathering a list of books, savoring the thought of spending the goodbye gift from my writers group in Los Angeles. It’s a hefty amount.
But first Richard and I must sniff around this rabbit warren of a bookstore—a warren for enchanted rabbits. In the front of the store to the left of the cashier, are books about Paris and France. Here I find Ernest Hemingway’s The Moveable Feast. But no Montaigne.
Sylvia, all in black, leggings and a long sweater, searches through the section on France. While she is looking, I remember bookstores where I’ve worked: The Tides in Sausalito, California; Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Rizzoli Books in New York City. I think that in a former life I was—not the owner of a bookstore—but a bookstore itself.
Sylvia says she’ll be right back. She thinks there is a volume of Montaigne on hold, and Voila! she returns with The Complete Essays.
I move on to the next room, the poetry section. I search for Dorianne Laux’s The Book of Men, and Susan Howe’s That This. No luck.
In the fiction section, I strike it rich. Here is Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita; Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea; Leonardo Sciascia’s The Wine Dark Sea, and Andre Breton’s Nadja.
And here are a few volumes of The Paris Review Interviews. I select Volume II, with interviews by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Alice Munro.
In the France section, I find Paris Metro Tales, translated by Helen Constantine, and the recently published, How to Live; A Life of Montaigne In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell.
I find Richard seated in the next room on a red theater seat, a huge book on the history of photography open on his lap.
“You pick a book that you want too.”
“No,” he says, “This is your gift. I don’t need to buy any more books.”
He is engrossed, which gives me time to sit on a ledge in the fiction section and read a bit from each book. Yes, the various recommendations from friends and book reviewers were all good.
A young black-haired couple speaking what sounds to me like Japanese stands nearby discussing choices of books.
Another couple in their 40s pokes through the France section speaking what might be Norwegian.
An Englishman talks with Lauren at the cashier's desk.
The sweet music of French is all around us.
At the counter, Lauren rings up my purchases, and asks me if I’d like my books stamped. Bien sûr! The stamp is a portrait of Shakespeare with the name of the bookstore and Kilometer Zero Paris in a ring around it.
I order Dorianne Laux’s latest and Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon. She hands me back my gift card. Half the credit amount still remains. Oh, how rich I feel!
In the window I notice a stuffed crow.
“….for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you…”
We walk out of Shakespeare & Company, in my right hand a big brown bag with nine books. Richard takes my left hand and chuckles, “You’re so happy with a stash of books.”
I send a thank you over the Seine, across France, sailing over the Atlantic Ocean, flying over the North American continent all the way to Los Angeles to Anna, Cassandra, Dawna, Diane, Jennifer, John and Jon.
They—like Sylvia, like the authors she carries, like her father, like my mother who read to me as a child and is the greatest reader I know, like the voices already speaking to me from the big brown bag—are my tribe, the People of the Book.
Reader Comments (23)
Your list will be added to my list. And so it goes....
Thank you, thank you.
Love,
Kaaren & Richard
We should let each other know of any GREAT books we are reading. I am so GRATEFUL to you s.t.a.r.s. for this luminous gift.
Love,
Kaaren & Richard
Synchronicity indeed. I am very eager to hear what you both think of Montaigne's essays. Also get Sarah Bakewell's How to Live; A Life of Montaigne In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. It is an absolutely ravishing book. She illuminates his life in a way I've rarely seen done in a biography. Really it's as much philosophy and story-telling as it is biography. His description of dying and coming back to life will change your sense of what death is forever. Or it did mine. (You probably read that it won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in the United States, and the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction in the U.K. In 2010.)
You nailed it. It's exactly like what record shops used to be like. The mystery and soulfulness of this particular book store has become a rare thing in the world. I could live there. Actually, there are young writers who come to Paris without lodging or much money and they do stay overnight in the bookstore for a time. A tradition that George Whitman started and Sylvia Beach Whitman continues. Again, soulful!
Thank you for your words. We treasure them.
Love,
Kaaren & Richard
Oh, such soulfulness and love and intelligence among you s.t.a.r.s. It gives us so much happiness to hear that you are enjoying the posts. Yes, Richard has only to hear a word--"fairy," or "in another life"--and he will find or create an oblique photo of it.
You are so much a part of my daily life that I want to do a journal post on Antioch, what great richness it brought into our lives.
I guess these posts will have to do until you can get to Paris yourself!
I heard that you were smashing reading from your novel last Sunday at the Ruskin Club. Picture reading it at Shakespeare & Co. Wouldn't that be fun?!
Love,
Kaaren & Richard
Tristine
We hope this may further make your day: When we were there Monday night we were delighted to see TWO copies of your book http://foodoodles.com/about.php Foodoodles. This may well mean that Sylvia has already sold fifty percent of her allotment, which is saying something for a small Paris bookseller.
See you in July!
http://www.thescreamonline.com/epiphanies/2-2epiphanies/index.html
I've always been enthralled by bookstores. One such shop in Boston was narrow, stuffy, piled to the ceiling with stacks of books. The owner's desk was a door laid across two piles of books. A few years after I moved to LA I heard that it had burned.
http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/paris/index.html
Unfortunately, George's light rein over the cash box, and his willingness to let the folks crashing there run the place too, was what kept the bookstore in slim financial shape over the years. George, nearly 98 now, is an incredible personality, yes, a businessman, no. It's so great to see it in Sylvia's capable hands.
Richard recalls gratefully being out of the rain, and HEARING, but not seeing Carver, because Richard was sitting in the middle of the spiral staircase leading up to the second floor.
I sucked in my breath and cried on reading this. From your mouth to the ears of the gods and goddesses: may I one day be as fine a chronicler of life in Paris as Janet Flanner was--or Genet, as she called herself.
We love you,
Kaaren and Richard
What beautiful images!
I can smell the bookstore. I want to touch the covers of each and every book.
Words are an amazing gift. Your words to us. The sentences words form. Emotions instilled.
The romance of the city sings in your language. The depiction of Sylvia is exquiste.
Being the sentimentalist that I am, when Richard takes your one hand and you have a stack of books in the other I experienced a vicarious kind of Parisian bliss.
Hugs, love and affection
Jon
And yay! A trip with you to Shakespeare & Co.! What fun... (I can't wait to go there with you in person one day soon!) I hope you love the Bulgakov as much as I did. It's a wild ride! And deep... And I had to look up the "Upstart Crow" - so interesting! Ha! I guess that Shakespeare guy had the last laugh on Robert Greene.
Thank you so much for sharing your visit. I loved hearing and seeing our fellow "people of the book" - of all nationalities! - through your words. And perfectly accompanied, as always, by Richard's photos. Is that a spirit hovering in the corner in the last bookstore interior photo? Mon dieu! Even the ghosts in Paris are literary! :) (I'm also very curious about the image of the little girl with wings...looks like a painting?)
Sending a big warm hug to you...
Much love,
dawna
Oh, what bliss to read your post. Thank you so very much. Your comments are a complete treat. We're not just the People of the Book, we're also the Lovers of the Word, as readers AND writers.
My favorite thing you said was about the two hands of love and creativity. You're da best!
Love,
Kaaren & Richard