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A review by rampaginglibrarian
Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer
4.0
Jeremy Mercer tells of a bookstore unlike any other, George Whitman's Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, France. I found Time was Soft There to be a much more appealing and relatable book than An Alphabetical Life. Although, as i mentioned, Shakespeare & Company is an entirely unique store (one that serves as new and used book store, a lending library, and a kind of free hostel for struggling writers) i found many of the characters somewhat familiar and, in some ways the bookstore itself almost recognizable as the bookstore i called home/work when i was in grad school. Mercer was definitely a much more likable voice for me as well.
Shakespeare and Company, in its current incarnation, opened in 1951, first named Le Mistral it then changed its name when Sylvia Beach, the owner of the legendary first Shakespeare and Company (publisher of Joyces Ulysses and rhapsodised about in Hemmingway's A Movable Feast), died. George Whitman, a communist, likes to think of his store as a "socialist utopia" and will let writers stay there for the price of their biography, their help with opening the store in the morning (dragging all the boxes out to the street and setting up the shelves); an hours worth of work in the store per day; closing the store at night; and reading one book per day. Sounds almost cool~though the living conditions aren't the greatest~but it is Paris. Wonderful, wonderful book.
Shakespeare and Company, in its current incarnation, opened in 1951, first named Le Mistral it then changed its name when Sylvia Beach, the owner of the legendary first Shakespeare and Company (publisher of Joyces Ulysses and rhapsodised about in Hemmingway's A Movable Feast), died. George Whitman, a communist, likes to think of his store as a "socialist utopia" and will let writers stay there for the price of their biography, their help with opening the store in the morning (dragging all the boxes out to the street and setting up the shelves); an hours worth of work in the store per day; closing the store at night; and reading one book per day. Sounds almost cool~though the living conditions aren't the greatest~but it is Paris. Wonderful, wonderful book.