George Whitman

George Whitman is the proprietor of the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore in Paris, and was a contemporary of such Beat poets as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He sometimes poses as a grandson or grand-nephew of American poet Walt Whitman. Fact|date=April 2007 Whitman allows young travellers to stay in the residential quarters of his "rue de la Bûcherie" premises, in exchange for two hours' work in the bookshop each day; you are also encouraged to read a book a day during your stay. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and although his exact age is generally undisclosed, some think his birthday is December 12, 1913,Fact|date=February 2007 although a US drivers license seen by Captain Franko in 1989 carried the date as December 12, 1911.

Whitman founded the bookstore in the 1950s, and named it after Sylvia Beach's earlier Paris bookstore "Shakespeare and Company". Whitman's store had a rocky history—he did not register or pay taxes for many years. Like many other artists in trouble with Internal Revenue, he was saved by André Malraux.

The present shop Shakespeare and Company at 37, rue de la Bûcherie in Paris, was opened in August 1951 (two years before sister bookshop City Lights was opened in San Francisco by Lawrence Ferlingetti) by George Whitman with an inheritance from his aunt. He called the shop "Le Mistral" after his first French girlfriend. From the very first night he allowed travellers, young writers, poets and artists to lodge in exchange with a hand in cleaning the shop. Sylvia Beach, whose famous shop was on 12, rue de l'Odéon, was still in Paris and came to Le Mistral to see the writers of the new generation, who Anaïs Nin called Xerox artists,Fact|date=February 2007 read aloud their new work. Whitman modeled his shop after Sylvia Beach's bookshop. As it was the only free English-language lending library in Paris, the Beats who arrived at the Beat Hotel on rue Git-le-Coeur quickly found their way to the small bookshop and made a place for themselves there. In 1962, Sylvia Beach died, willing to George Whitman a good deal of her private books and the rights to the name Shakespeare and Company. In 1964, Le Mistral was renamed Shakespeare and Company. Whitman named his daughter, born in 1981, after his bibliophilic predecessor; Sylvia Beach Whitman took over the running of the shop in 2003 at age 22. [http://www.parlerparis.com/issues/pparis11-8-04.html]

All Whitman asks of his guests is to provide a short "biography" and photograph and work a short period in the shop. On Sunday mornings he cooks his guests a pancake breakfast, brewing up a thin ersatz "syrup" out of some burnt sugar and water.

A documentary titled "Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man", by Gonzague Pichelin and Benjamin Sutherland, was running on The Sundance Channel in fall 2005. At the end of the film, Whitman trims his hair using the flame of a candle to set his hair on fire, then damps it out.

NPR story

On Wednesday, September 26, 2007, journalist Gerry Hadden's story on George Whitman, his daughter Sylvia, and Shakespeare & Company aired on NPR's "The World" (a co-production of the BBC, Public Radio International (PRI), and the Boston radio station WGBH). [http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/12946] [http://flickr.com/photos/pritheworld/sets/72157602170237931/]

Related links

Shakespeare & Co. writing workshop notice page [http://www.shakespeareco.org/creative_writing_workshop.html]