The Shakespeare & Co. bookshop on the Left Bank

Shakespeare & Co; An Angel in Disguise

By Paul Jensi

Paris Kiosque - June 2000 - Volume 7, Number 6
Copyright (c) 2000 Paul Jensi - Used with permission.

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Shakespeare &; Co
37, rue de la Bûcherie
Saint-Michel

The mighty Notre Dame huddles in the shadows of a tiny bookstore across the Seine on the Left Bank. Under the battered sign of Shakespeare & Co waits a dried up well primed for wishes in the heart of what was once a monastery.

The Wishing Well.

Not to be confused with Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare & Co (which was located on the rue de l'Odeon), in 1951 Walt Whitman's grandson, George, founded and runs the current shop. He is responsible for both the atmosphere authentic enough to leave a lump in a struggling writer's throat and the sense of community that makes every expatriate feel at home. There are perhaps booksellers in Paris with a wider selection or where the books are easier to find, but no place is more fun to shop for them than Shakespeare & Co. Most importantly, however, no other store feels so much like coming home.

Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise. The inscription at the top of the stairs is a welcome sign at the gates of heaven. Heaven in this case is the Tumbleweed Hotel, the upper floors of the shop, where chances are the vagabonds you meet will be tumbleweeds and wanderers will be angels. Outcast writers with no home to go to can always count on a bed nestled amongst the stacks and the only payment required is to read a book a day. Bookshelves, not walls, form the tiny rooms where troubadours sit and write out dreams so new they're wet and dreams so old they've been had before and lived out by those who dared.

If Shakespeare & Co were a dream, waking from it would taste like leaving and its residue would stay with you all day. The narrow and gnarled aisles of this librairie américaine resemble the streets of the Latin Quarter, streets inside which the shop is tucked like a book. If Shakespeare & Co were a book it would be well read and its wandering passages would be filled with poetry. It would be the kind of book you carried in your back pocket and took out when you were lonely. The kind you never forget and wish you yourself had written. Not the popular paperback you cannot put down, but the sort of story you have to put down because a good book is like a good meal and you need stop reading to savor the phrasing. Shakespeare & Co is the kind of book you call your favorite, the kind of book you recommend to a friend.

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In 1990 Paul quit his job in the United States and sold everything he had in exchange for a one-way ticket to Europe and a train pass. Figuring he would ride the rails until his money ran out, he voyaged through most European capitals before marrying the first French girl he met and moving to Paris in November of that year. Since then he published 123 articles and posted 192 of his photographs during his one-year tenure as Chief English writer at AOL France's Digital Paris Web site. His current goal of walking on every street in the city has revealed not only the importance of comfortable footwear but also the splendor of the city he calls his own (despite copyright infringement laws). He currently rents himself out as a guide and is working on ``Paris Misguided'', an unguide that will help him spread this love around. He can be contacted via PJensi@aol.com.