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An era ends as American owner of iconic Paris bookstore dies
Source: Agencies |
December 16, 2011, Friday
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GEORGE Whitman's life was packed with the type of adventures that filled every nook and cranny of his bookshop, Paris' iconic English-language Shakespeare and Company.
A bohemian traveler, Whitman was once nursed to health by Mayans in the Yucatan during a 5,000-kilometer trek across Latin America.
At home, Whitman was best known as a pillar of Paris' literary scene. For more than half century, his eclectic Left Bank shop was a beacon for readers, who spent long hours browsing its overflowing shelves or curling up with a good book. Shakespeare and Company was also a haven for every author or would-be writer passing through the City of Light.
For them, Whitman reserved a welcome that turned Yeats' famous verse - "Be not inhospitable to strangers/ Lest they be angels in disguise" - into deed: He took in aspiring writers as boarders in exchange for a helping hand in the store.
Whitman died on Wednesday in his apartment above the bookstore, two days after his 98th birthday and two months after suffering a stroke, the store announced on its website. "Nicknamed the Don Quixote of the Latin Quarter, George will be remembered for his free spirit, his eccentricity and his generosity," according to the statement.
The store was shuttered on Wednesday, and longtime customers, students and anonymous book-lovers lit candles on its stoop to pay their respects.
The store will live on under the management of Whitman's daughter, Sylvia Whitman. In an interview earlier this year, she summed up the unique store this way: "My father says it's a Socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore."
Whitman was born on December 12, 1913, in East Orange, New Jersey, although he grew up in Massachusetts.
His twin loves of the written word and foreign travel were nurtured early on, when his father, a physics professor who authored several science books, took the family along for a yearlong sabbatical at a Chinese university in 1925.
That was the first of a series of adventures that later saw Whitman wander Latin America, sail to Hawaii and hitch his way across the United States.
Whitman moved to Paris permanently under the GI Bill in 1948. Three years later, he founded his bookshop in an old building directly across the Seine River from Notre Dame cathedral. Initially baptized "Le Mistral" after the blustering winds that blow in off the Mediterranean, the shop's name was later changed.
A bohemian traveler, Whitman was once nursed to health by Mayans in the Yucatan during a 5,000-kilometer trek across Latin America.
At home, Whitman was best known as a pillar of Paris' literary scene. For more than half century, his eclectic Left Bank shop was a beacon for readers, who spent long hours browsing its overflowing shelves or curling up with a good book. Shakespeare and Company was also a haven for every author or would-be writer passing through the City of Light.
For them, Whitman reserved a welcome that turned Yeats' famous verse - "Be not inhospitable to strangers/ Lest they be angels in disguise" - into deed: He took in aspiring writers as boarders in exchange for a helping hand in the store.
Whitman died on Wednesday in his apartment above the bookstore, two days after his 98th birthday and two months after suffering a stroke, the store announced on its website. "Nicknamed the Don Quixote of the Latin Quarter, George will be remembered for his free spirit, his eccentricity and his generosity," according to the statement.
The store was shuttered on Wednesday, and longtime customers, students and anonymous book-lovers lit candles on its stoop to pay their respects.
The store will live on under the management of Whitman's daughter, Sylvia Whitman. In an interview earlier this year, she summed up the unique store this way: "My father says it's a Socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore."
Whitman was born on December 12, 1913, in East Orange, New Jersey, although he grew up in Massachusetts.
His twin loves of the written word and foreign travel were nurtured early on, when his father, a physics professor who authored several science books, took the family along for a yearlong sabbatical at a Chinese university in 1925.
That was the first of a series of adventures that later saw Whitman wander Latin America, sail to Hawaii and hitch his way across the United States.
Whitman moved to Paris permanently under the GI Bill in 1948. Three years later, he founded his bookshop in an old building directly across the Seine River from Notre Dame cathedral. Initially baptized "Le Mistral" after the blustering winds that blow in off the Mediterranean, the shop's name was later changed.
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