Customer Reviews

Shakespeare and Company

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This, a book about books, is one of my favorites. In just 220 pages, bookshop owner Sylvia Beach, owner of the bookstore "Shakespeare and Company," paints a vivid portrait of the social, cultural, and especially , in Paris.

The store opened in November 1919, offering works of T.S. Elliot, Joyce, Chaucer, and others, a variety of literary reviews, and photographs of Wilde and Whitman. It ran first as kind of lending library, and almost immediately the many native and expatriate writers of Europe were borrowing books--and giving her their own new writings. Very early customers included Gide, Maurois, American poet Robert McAlmon , "Mr. and Mrs. Pound, " and the following couple:

"Not long after I opened my bookshop, two women came walking down the rue Dupuytren. One of them, with a very fine face, was stout, wore a long robe, and, on her head, a most becoming top of a basket. She was accompanied by a slim, dark whimsical woman: she reminded me of a gypsy. They were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas."

Sylvia Beach writes clearly, candidly, and fondly of her many visitors and friends in prewar Europe, especially the 1920's ( she and her friends dismantled the shop when the Nazis threatened to confiscate her books in 1941). She evokes an entire era though richly told and plentiful anecdotes. She writes of encounters and friendships with such notables as Sherwood Anderson, Katherine Anne Porter, Satie, Bryher, H.D., Paul Valery, Valery Larbaud, D. H. Lawrence, and Hemingway (at the end of the book, Hemingway liberates "the wine cellar at the Ritz" (Hemingway's words) as he and his company try to rid the Rue l'Odeon of the remaining German snipers. Perhaps her closest relationship was with James Joyce, and she tells many stories, both amusing and sad, about him. (Sylvia Beach published the first edition of the highly controversial "Ulysses" in 1922.) The book feels intimate; one feels as if M. Beach has let one into her confidence. Highly enjoyable, fascinating, personal--and ultimately thrilling.

These memoirs by Sylvia Beach--originally published in the 1950s--are reprinted here exactly as published. Ms. Beach became one of the most prominent Americans in Paris during the twenties and thirties by opening a bookstore called "Shakespeare & Company" (the title of this book). But to refer to her as a "bookstore manager" misses the point completely. Shakespeare & Company was a meeting place for many of the literary luminaries living in Paris at the time, including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her personal account places the reader in the center of their lives in a way no biographer looking back eighty years could dare to accomplish. Most notably, though, is Ms. Beach's support of James Joyce. When Joyce's masterpiece "Ulysses" looked as if it might not be published because of the fear of censorship exhibited by some of the established British and American publishing companies, Ms. Beach took it upon herself to take Joyce's finished manuscript to a printer in Dijon, and published the book herself, thereby ensuring that the world would experience this novel as Joyce intended. In fact, she exhibited admirable patience by allowing Joyce to correct proofs innumerable times and to increase the size by one third after it had been initially typeset by hand.

These memoirs are anecdotal and readable and the story moves along quickly. The only criticism I have, however, is that having read subsequent works, such as the Fitch book on Sylvia Beach, there were a few occasions in this volume when the editors back in the 1950s cut sections of her manuscript that dealt with "controversial" subjects, such as the relationship between Ms. Beach and the French bookseller Adrienne Monnier. One would hope at some time a publisher might afford Ms. Beach the opportunity she gave to James Joyce: to have the book published as she intended.

Sylvia Beach, with eyes and ears that missed little in the way of nuance and subtlety, as much compassion for her fellows as passion for their writing and her bookshop, and a plucky all-American, "the gal can do it" spirit, wordpaints very likely one of the most accurate portraits of literary and artistic ex-patriates in Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. While they do seem a jolly crew, Beach is unflinching in her descriptions of the tiffs and teapot tempests that regularly flew. While such works as Hemingway's MOVEABLE FEAST, McAlmon's BEING GENIUSES TOGETHER, and Janet Flanner's PARIS WAS YESTERDAY are interesting and viable, each in its own way, Sylvia's little book out-sparkles them all for wit and humane truth. A priceless gem among books about books, readers and writers.

What a wonderful find! This book is truly a treasure and made me wish I had been an author in Paris during the 20's. Sylvia Beach ran her library Shakespeare and Company on the left bank on Rue l'Odeon for many years and served as the location for English language books in Paris. During that time she worked closely with Joyce and personally handled not only publishing Ulysses but also took care of all his mail and the shipping of his books to various customers around the world.

There is a rather funny scene she describes. Because it was so hard to get Ulysses into America (since it was banned), Sylvia had a dilemma concerning distribution. Hemingway, who proclaims himself Sylvia's "best customer", tells her not to worry and within a few days he comes back to let her know he has a friend who has moved to Canada who will personally bring the books into America by ferry, stuffed in his pants.

I cannot say enough what a beautiful book this is. Beach is as gifted as the authors she esteemed and brings to life a world you wish you could climb into.

I would also highly recommend A Moveable Feast by Earnest Hemingway in conjunction to this.

Every once in a great while I stumble upon a book I've never heard of and feel as though I've discovered treasure. This is such a book. Though I had heard of Sylvia Beach and her famous book shop/lending library, her memoir "Shakespeare & Company" was unknown to me. In an easy, conversational style, Beach gives the history of her shop and observational portraits of the various artists who treated her establishment as a salon of sorts. These artists included Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot and Andre Gide, among others. She expounds upon her experiences as James Joyce's publisher and benefactress to a considerable depth, while never overtly acknowledging the intimate nature of her relationship with Adrienne Monnier. Beach's life in Paris and her interactions with 'the lost generation,' was published almost fifty years ago, but remains engaging, enjoyable and relevant today. Indeed a treat.

I've been carrying a first edition of this book around from state to state for several years, and never really quite got around to reading it, as I was more involved with books by the writers Beach writes about, and with the more mundane details of life. What a shame. This is a thoroughly enjoyable and chatty memoir of one rather significant (but don't overstate this) expatriate member of the so-called "Lost Generation". The book is an easy read -- certainly no literary masterpiece, though I doubt it was intended as one. Beach recounts her efforts a running a little book store specializing in modern American literature (and, of course, publishing a small work by an Irish writer, as well), and details her encounters with various figures of the era, be they French, English or American. At times, particularly early on, Beach resorts to simple name dropping -- one day so-and-so came in, this person was a regular customer, etc.; but that is really just a quibble as the sheer volume of significant names brings to mind a roll call of the major modern literary figures of the English language. And "Shakespeare & Co." also has a nice little side effect -- it reminded me of some writers (and a composer - Georges Antheil) that I haven't read yet, or haven't read in a while. I highly recommend this book.

good, though not quite what I expected, September 12, 2004
I purchased this book knowing little about Sylvia Beach and her bookstore Shakespeare and Company, but hoping to find out more. Since this particular book is rather autobiographical, I figured I could learn a lot from it about her. Actually it was more about her famous friends (Joyce, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and many other writers and other prominent social and literary figures of the day; if you're familiar with the Algonquin Round Table and their expanded circle of friends, a lot of these people cross over), with only rather modest information provided about herself. It is still an interesting read, and the stories she recounts are well done and witty, but the spotlight is less on her own story and more on the people she surrounded herself with. I would like to seek out a more objective biography of her to couple to the information I've learned in this book. Still, do read it, especially if you are interested in the literati of the 1920s-30s.

Hemingway's A Moveable Feast got me going with memoirs about the Lost Generation in Paris. I've since read Morley Callaghan's The Last Summer in Paris, Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and now Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company. This may not be as punchy as Hemingway's or Stein's books, or as focused as Callaghan's, but its lens is wider and its sentiments warmer or more forgiving in many cases. It helps to further define this remarkable time and place.

Beach's English language bookstore and lending library in Paris that took off after World War I was a hub that drew writers, artists and musicians. James Joyce was a fixture there, and Beach bravely offered to publish Ulysses, an act that brings to mind that Chinese proverb, that once you save someone's life, you are responsible for it forever. Her book is a long parade of established names that produced the classics the world still values very much. The anecdotes, often rendered with a warm wit, lay out Paris, the personalities and the force of modernism. She wrote this book from the perspective of age, after she had survived internment in a Nazi camp, the loss of her bookshop and the deaths of many people who had mattered, so perhaps what may have once been the stuff of resentment or severances was no longer important to her; the book is very, very low on discord. She speaks warmly and with respect for everyone, even Joyce, who eventually left her for another publisher, and Gertrude Stein who apparently did not like having a rival salon in town. The ending, as Paris is being liberated after the ravages of war, is right out of a movie. Who should come rolling down her street with the Allied troops but her old friend Hemingway, who sweeps her off her feet.

Beach is reticent about her prison camp experience and matter of fact about the war. She never states that she and her mentor/friend Adrienne Monnier were in fact a lesbian couple. She does not express regrets or anger. She does not dish dirt. She never complains about the weather in Paris. She can be very amusing, and it is fascinating to see so many literary and arts lights up close when they were in their prime. She never makes her own story about herself.

I purchased this book knowing little about Sylvia Beach and her bookstore Shakespeare and Company, but hoping to find out more. Since this particular book is rather autobiographical, I figured I could learn a lot from it about her. Actually it was more about her famous friends (Joyce, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and many other writers and other prominent social and literary figures of the day; if you're familiar with the Algonquin Round Table and their expanded circle of friends, a lot of these people cross over), with only rather modest information provided about herself. It is still an interesting read, and the stories she recounts are well done and witty, but the spotlight is less on her own story and more on the people she surrounded herself with. I would like to seek out a more objective biography of her to couple to the information I've learned in this book. Still, do read it, especially if you are interested in the literati of the 1920s-30s.

This book arrived in excellent condition and during the time it was anticipated. It is a wonderful book of memoirs by Sylvia Beach about her book store and lending library in Paris during the 20's and 30's.