A return to a bookstore in Paris

Visiting Shakespeare and Company

This last fall in Paris I had the opportunity to visit the iconic bookstore Shakespeare and Company.  I had visited many years before as a child but had forgotten the name over the years.   Now, however, you can find anything on the internet, and I was thrilled to be able to map my way to the store.  On the store’s website I found that they collected stories from bookstore patrons over the years and just for fun I wrote up and emailed a little story about my visit.

Dear Shakespeare and Company,

In 1971, the summer I was nine my parents took me to Europe.   My father, a young college professor, had left home a month earlier to teach a seminar in what was then Yugoslavia.  My mother and I were to fly over the cheapest way possible (Icelandic), pick up a new Volvo in Luxembourg, and drive to Yugoslavia to meet my father.  My mother was only 29 at the time and I don’t think she had been out of the United States before.  While my younger sisters were left to vacation with grandparents, my mother later claimed that she brought me along to ensure that she stopped for meals and found nightly lodging on her drive across several countries.

At nine I was already a voracious reader and my mother had underestimated the number of books that would be needed to keep me entertained during down times and I was reduced to rereading the small collection I had with me.   Fortunately, as the oldest child who had grown up in college atmosphere, I was well equipped to sit at the table and add my two cents to adult dinners.

By the time we had toured Yugoslavia and driven through Italy, we had added two more college associates to the group making for a full car. Eventually we reached Paris and found an inexpensive hotel where I had to sleep on the floor on a pile of blankets (this really was the era of “Europe on Five Dollars A Day”).  While not every stop in the city made an impression on my nine-year-old mind I have a vivid memory of the whole group finding a bookstore that I would later remember as being not too far from Notre Dame.

This was a group of readers, so everyone was willing to stop for a bit.  My mother and I wandered through the downstairs shelves.; my father was back near the entrance talking to a gentleman who must have been the owner.  The story that my father later told (and my father was known for embellishing a story for effect) was that the owner was quite impressed that my father was the only man traveling with 4 women (well, 3 women and one girl).  What I remember is that my mother and I were told we could go upstairs – so we did.  To my great joy I found some children’s books in English. (Perhaps I should be embarrassed that this was my introduction to Enid Blyton’s books – but I’m not.)  And I do remember finding on the wall the list of ‘rules’ for staying at the bookstore.  Though we didn’t stay overnight I was quite prepared to read a book a day!

As we paid for our books the person checking us out – possible the owner- gave me a postcard that declared I was entitled to a free book when I came back at age 18 (or maybe it was 19).  I held on to that postcard for years until it eventually got lost in a move.

I didn’t get back to Paris for years.  When I was there in the early ‘90s (before the internet) I made a brief search for a bookstore I remembered from childhood.  While I did find a bookstore that reminded me of the past- it wasn’t the one.

 

Now, years later, while planning a trip to Paris for the fall, I ran a quick internet search for that bookstore that I remembered.  To my surprise I quickly had a result that matched my childhood memories of book shopping in Paris!  I’m looking forward to visiting Shakespeare and Company again! Too bad I lost my (long, long expired) free book postcard.

 Kara Strite

February 2018