Shakespeare and Company
37 Rue de la Bûcherie, 5th Arr.
This bookstore was the mecca for Anglo-American writers in Paris during the 1920's. Writers such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and later Henry Miller spent a fair amount of their time here. Shakespeare and Company is mentioned in a lot of their publishings due to the boutique's stature in the literary world at the time.
Needing a swank (english) read while in Paris, I decided to take a gander at this famed bookstore situated just a few feet from the Seine. Cramped, constricted, and narrow, my roommate Emma and I shuffled our way through the entrance and started searching for books. Daniel told me Tropics of Cancer by Henry Miller was a novel worth checking out. The book is almost in journal-jotting form. Miller, a struggling writer from New York living in 1940's Paris describes all his sexual ventures with hookers and hardships as he wonders the City of Light. It goes without saying, I was down. As I went to the cashier to pay, the American woman at the counter branded the inside of my book with the legendary Shakespeare and Company stamp and bid me ourvoir. Tropics of Cancer is now one of my favorite tokens of Paris.
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