Iconic Paris Bookstore Owner George Whitman Dies

George Whitman, owner and founder of Paris’s Shakespeare and Company bookstore, passed away Wednesday. He was 98.

Gerry Hadden’s fond remembrance to George Whitman

Leave What You Can

I profiled George Whitman for The World in 2007. At 93 he was still shuffling down the stairs from his flat in the morning to wander the store and take a coffee in a cushioned rocker on the sidewalk out front. Like his shop, he was a rarity in this day and age, a rebel not out to bring down the system through street protests or politics but through generosity. “Take what you need, give what you can” read one of the many signs hanging in his shop. George gave his whole heart to writers and readers and friends. So much so that at times people wondered if he might drive himself out of business. But his determination to run more than just a book business served him well. And it made him a hero to the tens of thousands of aspiring authors who literally took refuge in his shop over the years.

George Whitman's store Shakespeare and Company. (Photo: Gerry Hadden)

George leaves behind a lot of grateful writers and contented book lovers. And he leaves Shakespeare and Company in the hands of his wonderful daughter, Sylvia, who carries the torch with the same Whitman spirit.

Vivre Shakespeare and Company! Vivre George Whitman!

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Marco Werman: The world of books lost a great champion yesterday. George Whitman, owner and founder of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris passed away at the age of 98. The World’s Gerry Hadden met George at the chipper age of 93 down at the store in Paris. Gerry joins us from Barcelona. Gerry, Mr. Whitman was kind of tied inextricably to the literary Paris of decades past. In person did he convey that kind of romanticism?

Gerry Hadden: Absolutely, he you know, invited me up to his small apartment right above the bookstore, and it was just as you might imagine it — as cozy and sort of cramped and mussy as the bookstore itself. And you know, he was 93 years old at the time, quite frail, prone to taking naps for most of the day with a nurse that was with him all day, and yet he made time for the Public Radio reporter to come up into his house and have a coffee with him. And you know, he just exuded this sense of generosity and adventure, and this sense that literature is something magical.

Werman: So this American who’s born in Salem, Massachusetts, ends up in Paris. What did he do for the book world of Paris?

Hadden: Well, what he did really was take the idea of owning a bookstore and opening it up entirely in several directions. Most notably, what he did was he literally opened his doors to young, starving, aspiring writers. He claimed at one point that he probably let over 40,000 writers, most of them unknowns, sleep in the store. And that was a tradition that he setup from the very first night. And it’s a tradition that continues today with his daughter, Sylvia, at the helm. She said to me back in 2007 when I interviewed both of them that she was a little bit stricter than her father. You know, he would let anybody basically who said they were a writer come in and sleep for a night or two, or a week, or sometimes even months. Sylvia said you know, I now screen them so I get a sense of what their writing project is before I let them sleep there. She was trying to avoid a kind of youth hostile atmosphere. But that said, on average, six writers were sleeping there every single night.

Werman: Oh, my gosh.

Hadden: So as a shopper, you go into Shakespeare and Company, anyone who’s been there has run into a poet sitting in the corner scribbling furiously in a notebook, or a novelist right there by the front window sitting in the light and typing on his laptop. It’s a place where you realize that books are being sold, and read and also created.

Werman: Given that it doubled as kind of a hostile, I guess it didn’t just smell like musty books.

Hadden: It smelled wonderful.

Werman: Gerry, how will you remember George Whitman?

Hadden: I will remember him as a smiling, eclectic lover of books, a champion of books, as a sort of rebel armed with generosity rather than eyre at the system, at the world he saw around him. He was constantly trying to make sure that the bookstore was not becoming overly commercial. He was the champion of poets and writers. And that’s the guy I’ll remember — this old man with long, stringy hair sitting there in his chair over a cup of tea smiling about all the writers he helped in his life.

Werman: Great memory, The World’s Europe correspondent speaking with us about the late George Whitman, owner and founder of Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. You can find Gerry’s story and photos online at theworld.org. Gerry, thanks so much.

Hadden: My pleasure.

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Gerry Hadden’s interview with George Whitman in 2007