George Whitman - Bookstore

Bookstore

Whitman founded his bookstore in 1951 and named it Le Mistral, then later named it after Sylvia Beach's earlier Paris bookstore "Shakespeare and Company". His shop, located at 37 rue de la Bûcherie in Paris, was opened in August 1951 (two years before a sister bookshop City Lights was opened in San Francisco by Lawrence Ferlinghetti) by George Whitman with an inheritance from his aunt. He called the shop "Le Mistral" after his first French girlfriend. From the very first night he allowed travellers, young writers, poets and artists to lodge in exchange for a hand in cleaning the shop, building shelves and selling books. Sylvia Beach, whose famous shop was on 12, rue de l'Odéon, was still in Paris and came to Le Mistral to see the writers of the new generation, whom Anaïs Nin called Xerox artists, read aloud their new work. Whitman modeled his shop after Sylvia Beach's and, in 1958 while dining with George, she publicly announced that she was handing the name to him for his bookshop. As it was the only free English-language lending library in Paris, the Beats who arrived at the Beat Hotel on rue Git-le-Coeur quickly found their way to the small bookshop and made a place for themselves there. In 1962, Sylvia Beach died, willing to Whitman a good deal of her private books and the rights to the name Shakespeare and Company. In 1964, Le Mistral was renamed Shakespeare and Company. Whitman named his daughter, born in 1981, after his bibliophilic predecessor; Sylvia Whitman took over the running of the shop in 2003 at age 22.

Whitman allowed young travellers to stay in the residential quarters of his rue de la Bûcherie premises (specifically published writers); and one was also encouraged to read a book a day during your stay and were asked for two hours work as contribution to the running of the shop. All Whitman asked of his guests is to provide a short "biography" and photograph and work a short period in the shop. On Sunday mornings he traditionally cooked his guests a pancake breakfast, brewing up a thin ersatz "syrup" out of some burnt sugar and water.

Whitman began to receive international notice when a documentary titled Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man, by Gonzague Pichelin and Benjamin Sutherland, ran on The Sundance Channel in fall 2005. At the end of the film, Whitman trimmed his hair using the flame of a candle, set his hair on fire, and then doused it.

On Wednesday, September 26, 2007, journalist Gerry Hadden's story on George Whitman, his daughter Sylvia Beach Whitman, and Shakespeare & Company aired on NPR's The World (a co-production of the BBC, Public Radio International (PRI), and the Boston radio station WGBH).