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 A Winner, About Winners Jun 05, 2010
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.
Shakespeare and Company Apr 07, 2008
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.
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Shakespeare would be proud Apr 10, 2005
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.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
 A Pleasant, Chatty Memoir Dec 31, 2004
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.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
not quite what I expected Oct 04, 2004
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.
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