Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. [Paperback]

Jeremy Mercer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 19, 2006

Wandering through Paris's Left Bank one day, poor and unemployed, Canadian reporter Jeremy Mercer ducked into a little bookstore called Shakespeare & Co. Mercer bought a book, and the staff invited him up for tea. Within weeks, he was living above the store, working for the proprietor, George Whitman, patron saint of the city's down-and-out writers, and immersing himself in the love affairs and low-down watering holes of the shop's makeshift staff. Time Was Soft There is the story of a journey down a literary rabbit hole in the shadow of Notre Dame, to a place where a hidden bohemia still thrives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mercer explains his memoir's title this way: "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." His graceful narrative follows struggling writers as they live on potato soup and dreams at Paris's famous expatriate bookshop. Mercer, a former Ottowa Citizen crime reporter, finds himself at Shakespeare one gloomy Parisian day in 1999, in his late 20s, with not much money and no plans for the future, trying to evade some angry newspaper sources back home. With little fanfare, he is taken into the store by its owner, George Whitman, a kindly yet scatterbrained man, who explains, "I run a socialist utopia that masquerades as a bookstore." Mercer begins working as an eager unpaid employee, running errands, acting as a referee between the writers who hang out there and ringing up sales (it's no B&N superstore: when Mercer asks where the credit card machine is, he's told, "Dude, Shakespeare and Company doesn't even have a telephone. Of course we don't take credit cards"). Mercer portrays the assorted characters and their adventures with an eye for detail and a wry sense of humor. Francophile book lovers will enjoy his finely crafted memoir.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

As a crime reporter in Canada, Mercer received a threatening call after naming an underworld source in a book. Fearing for his life, he quit his job and flew to Paris. As his funds dwindled, he stumbled upon Shakespeare and Co., a small bookstore on the Left Bank across from Notre-Dame, and spent nine months living rent-free in the upstairs library, along with a rotating cast of backpackers and aspiring writers. Despite Mercer's predilection for melodramatic flourishes, the memoir ably captures a romanticized version of the bum's life, with elaborate schemes to scrape up money (like buying designer handbags on behalf of Asian tourists) and nights spent drinking wine and swapping stories. But the real star is the eccentric and charming bookstore proprietor, George Whitman, who remarks, after losing a stack of two-hundred-franc notes to nest-building mice, "At least it's not the books."
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (September 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312347405
• ISBN-13: 978-0312347406
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Travel > Europe > France > Paris

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Charming Memoir of a Modern-Day Paris Bohemian, January 2, 2006

By 

Amy Senk "Read it, Loved it" (Orange County, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. (Hardcover)

Time Was Soft There is a charming memoir that reads like an exceptional novel. It tells the story of a jaded, hard-drinking Canadian cops reporter who must flee after a betrayed source issues threats.

Mercer ends up in Paris to finish a college language requirement. Then, just as he is running out of money, he spots the Shakespeare & Company bookshop during a downpour. He slips inside for a peek, and immediately finds friends, a home, a way of life that is seductive and artistic and romantic all at once.

The story does read like fiction from another era. Mercer's writing is so smooth and honest, and his story is incredible. He captures a very magical place in a magical city. Anyone who loves to get lost in bookstores will savor this book.

There is a fair amount of history in the story, which gives the book a spine. He explains the family background of the bookshop owner, his political leanings, his ties to the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco.

Mercer also does a wonderful job of showing the downside to such a romantic and crazy life choice. Giving up everything in order to live in a famous book store in a famous city sounds wonderful, but there are filthy toilets and hunger pangs and thieves and heartbreak, too.

This is an honest and well-written book about a fascinating subject. Time Was Soft There will surely catch the fancy of anyone who loves books and writers.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Romance and Reality in Literary Paris, December 11, 2005

By 

Paris fan "thegert" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. (Hardcover)

In this memoir of his stay at Shakespeare & Co., Jeremy Mercer skillfully uses his talents as an extraordinary writer-storyteller. He captures the Romantic notions of all who go (or long to go) to Paris to experience the mythical pasts of the writers and artists who have flocked there for hundreds of years, and balances these notions with the often harsh realities of living the life of the starving artist. These experiences are couched in the Romantic life of George Whitman, the bookstore's founder, who in his free-wheeling life as an ex-patriate with all of its ups and downs, must ultimately face the realities of life as an aging rebel, grappling with the future of his haven - the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vivid, witty and Engrossing, November 10, 2005

By 

E. Sutton "Sam" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. (Hardcover)

With wry wit, self-deprecation and profound humanity, Jeremy Mercer takes us into the unique world that is Shakespeare & Co on the Left Bank of Paris. It's a warts and all look at the scraggly, literate residents, and an honest and loving portrait of the store's octegnarian owner, George Whitman, who emerges as a classic flawed hero, a man who built an instituion on a quixotic dream and little cash. When you finish this book, you will feel like you lived in the store yourself for a while.