French Friday: Shakespeare & Company

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." - Ernest Hemingway

Melinda at Shakespeare & Company, 1994

Author's Note: One of my first blog posts featured the iconic Paris bookshop, Shakespeare & Company. Since the Paris in July series encourages bloggers to review their favorite books about Paris, here are my reflections on the book I purchased at Shakespeare & Company twenty years ago. As a student in Paris, I spent countless hours at the Shakespeare & Company bookshop on the Left Bank. I loved browsing through endless stacks of books, marveling at the lovely chaos. Before returning home, I purchased a copy of A Moveable Feast at Shakespeare & Company,  just to receive the "Kilometer Zero" stamp on the title page.  As a graduate student studying literature, it seemed the perfect souvenir of my own time in Paris: Hemingway's memoir of strolling through the same narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, of visiting some of the same cafés, and of Shakespeare & Company.

A hopeless romantic, I ignored the fact that this shop isn't the original Shakespeare & Company. It isn't Sylvia Beach's legendary lending library, frequented by Lost Generation writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and of course, Ernest Hemingway. The original shop, that famously published James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922, was located at 12 rue de l'Odéon. It closed in 1940 during the Nazi occupation of Paris, and although in 1944, Hemingway personally "liberated" his favorite haunts including the Ritz Hotel and Shakespeare & Company, the bookstore never reopened.

I don't know if Hemingway ever stepped foot inside this shop at 37 rue de la Bûcherie. Opened in 1951 and originally called Le Mistral, it didn't become Shakespeare & Company until 1964, three years after Hemingway's death. Yet I still imagine those ex-patriot writers as I wander through that musty maze of old books, sleepy cats, aspiring poets and novelists.  Perhaps in my romantic musings, I overlooked the true importance of this current establishment.

Le Mistral became Shakespeare & Company when Sylvia Beach passed away willing both the iconic name and most of her private book collection to George Whitman. For over fifty years, he and his daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman, continued Ms. Beach's mission to support aspiring writers. The Whitmans have offered meals and lodging to over 40,000 travelers, including Henry Miller, Richard Wright, Anaïs Nin, and the Beat poets. In return, they have asked lodgers to work two hours in the bookshop and to read one book each day. Canadian journalist, Jeremy Mercer, pays tribute to the bookshop in his memoir, Time Was Soft There: "Hard time goes slowly and painfully and leaves a man bitter....Time at Shakespeare and Company was as soft as anything I'd ever felt." I visited Shakespeare & Company again last April. After lighting a candle in Notre Dame cathedral and deliberately stepping on Point Zéro to ensure my return to Paris, I crossed the Pont Saint-Michel to the rue de la Bûcherie. It was a lovely afternoon, fresh and bright with the clichéd but precise allure of Paris in the springtime, so I didn't go inside.  Instead, I browsed through the books on the sidewalk, washed my hands in the Wallace fountain, and had lunch at the café next door. As I sipped my wine, I thought about how lucky I am have been in Paris as a young woman and to have returned so many times. Hemingway was right; it does stay with you for the rest of your life! 

Lucky

July 17, 2014 Photo (198/365): "Between a rock and a hard place"

We all feel trapped sometimes, caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place; yet often it is in those tightest spots that we find our inspiration, our courage, our strength, and a little bit of luck.

Apple Camp

The boys and I had a great time at Apple Camp, a three-day workshop where kids "bring their imaginations to life." Yesterday, we met Abby, Jack, and Marie, our camp counselors, who taught us how to create storyboards for our movies and how to create our own soundtracks using GarageBand. The kids went home with cool camp t-shirts, headphones, lanyards, and awesome flash drive bracelets to store all of their creations. Last night's homework was to shoot 4-5 minutes of footage to edit into a two-minute feature film. Alec directed his own episode of Harry Potter, Slytherin vs. Griffyndor which we shot "on location" at St. John's Military Academy and Cushing Park in Delafield. Chase directed and starred in Grand Slam, batting practice in the back yard with Uncle Eric and Great Uncle John.  Today we edited our movies using iMovie for Mac, adding special effects, transitions, and the soundtracks that the boys created yesterday. Tomorrow at our final day of camp, all of the young movie makers will showcase their work at the Apple Camp Film Festival. The boys did an awesome job!  

Apple Camp Feedback:

  • Chase: "My favorite part was watching my movie. I really like making the songs. The counselors were really nice, and my friend, Adam, was there too."

  • Alec: "I liked acting and filming the movie. Editing is hard, but fun. Jack was my favorite counselor because he was helpful and nice. I would tell my friends to go to Apple Camp. It was fun!"

  • Auntie: Camp was really well-organized, the counselors were great with the kids, and the boys took home some cool Apple swag. A few suggestions: The Apple Store is such busy place so it was really hard to hear and concentrate. It might be better to have a quieter space for the demonstrations. It would also be awesome if the kids' videos could be shown on the big screen at the cinema in the mall. The film festival starts at 9:00 am so it wouldn't interfere with regular box office movies. Tips for parents: It is hard to produce two movies at the same time. I would suggest either taking each child separately or having more than one adult to split the work.