Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co.

Reading about life inside Paris' Shakespeare and Company was a hoot. I laughed out loud so many times I thought the neighbors would complain. I stopped reading the book for a week five pages from the end because I didn't want it to end. Jeremy nailed the character of George Bates Whitman not to mention all the other delightful characters in that toppling pile of old books that teeters on God knows what alongside the Seine. Two years before Jeremy I introviewed George for my memoir of Hemingway. When I asked him to comb down his wild hair for a photograph, he looked at me in shock and said he hadn't used a comb for years. When he had to, he told me,he used a fork. I combed his hair with mine and shot the picture. Now, thanks to Time Was Soft There, I learned how George got a haircut...by burning it off! Thank God we didn't get to that! This book is a pure delight from cover to cover and I am sending a copy to an old WW2 Army buddy who was with me for that interview. I know he will laugh himself into the funny farm from reading it because his self-control is not as good as mine.

I never lived or worked at Shakespeare but a friend did twenty-five years ago, and five years ago my wife and I dropped into the store to browse and follow her trail. When I mentioned that I knew Howard Zinn, legendary owner George Whitman immediately invited us to stay at the bookstore. (We'd already paid at the wonderful hotel next door, Hotel Esmerelda, so passed on staying there, but took George up on sharing Christmas Dinner, where we met Jeremy Mercer and a moveable feast of other great people. It was the most memorable evening of our trip, and one of the richest evening's of conversation I've ever had--all part of the ambience of the store. I just spent all evening reading Mercer's book and it was great. We only got that brienf glimpse of Shakespeare & Co but from what I could tell Mercer captured the mileu wonderfully, especially the amazing George Whitman. It's a cliche to talk about a global homogenizized culture. Shakespeare & Co really is part of the antidote, in all its messy glory, dirty dishes and all. And an amazing bookstore on top of that. So thanks to Jeremy for capturing all this.

In this memoir of his stay at Shakespeare & Co., Jeremy Mercer skillfully uses his talents as an extraordinary writer-storyteller. He captures the Romantic notions of all who go (or long to go) to Paris to experience the mythical pasts of the writers and artists who have flocked there for hundreds of years, and balances these notions with the often harsh realities of living the life of the starving artist. These experiences are couched in the Romantic life of George Whitman, the bookstore's founder, who in his free-wheeling life as an ex-patriate with all of its ups and downs, must ultimately face the realities of life as an aging rebel, grappling with the future of his haven - the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore.

With wry wit, self-deprecation and profound humanity, Jeremy Mercer takes us into the unique world that is Shakespeare & Co on the Left Bank of Paris. It's a warts and all look at the scraggly, literate residents, and an honest and loving portrait of the store's octegnarian owner, George Whitman, who emerges as a classic flawed hero, a man who built an instituion on a quixotic dream and little cash. When you finish this book, you will feel like you lived in the store yourself for a while.