What a Wonderful Way to Die
12.16.2011 
Our friend George Whitman died Wednesday.
The legendary, incredibly hospitable, and sometimes famously irascible proprietor of the latest incarnation of the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company was 98. We've shared our love of the bookstore here on Paris Play twice before.
In these latter years, George had turned over the operations of the store to his supremely competent, beautiful, and equally hospitable daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman, who expands on her father's gifts by running the bookstore as a business, too, which wasn't really in George's nature.
Here's what we mean: Richard had the pleasure of being George's guest at his "Tumbleweed Hotel," a few times during the eighties, which sometimes entailed running the cash box while George stepped out. George was a wonderful, trusting soul, but Richard suspects that many of the other vagabonds who also found themselves in the position of watching the store may not have been as scrupulously honest.
George estimated that he put up more than 40,000 travelers at the bookstore over the years. In exchange for a bed, George asked them to work an hour or two a day, write a short autobiography and read a book a day.
In a video made by Book TV C-Span 2 in 2002 (when George was 90 years old and Sylvia was 21), the interviewer asked him about Sylvia:
Is she the only child you have?
George: In a way she's the only one. In another way, I have thousands of children all over the world.
Interviewer: She came a little late for you, didn't she?
George: Not for me. I'm just beginning to live. When I'm 100 years old, come and interview me again, I'll tell you some more interesting stories.
His friends recalled that George also had the habit of slipping large denomination franc notes into books as bookmarks, then reshelving them and forgetting where he put them. Since George ran Shakespeare as a lending library, too, people would report finding 50,000 franc bills, which George would pocket, saying, "Oh, I wondered where that went." He was a great lover and patron of literature, and counted among his friends many of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, among them Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, Lawrence Durrell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg and Wiliam Burroughs.
Willis Barnstone read at Shakespeare in August
I met George in the nineties when Richard and I began traveling to Paris together. In his mid-eighties, he was lean and raffishly bohemian, and had the aura of a Merlin. As Sylvia said about her father in the 2005 video, Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man, "For me, he's more of a very eccentric wizard."
There are many fine obituaries out there with all of the pertinent "facts," how George was given the mantle and bookstore name by Sylvia Beach, who began the store in November 1919 (and closed it in December 1941 after threats from the occupying Nazis), and who first published James Joyce's Ulysses; how George and his friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights in San Francisco began their "sister stores" in the early 1950's, etc.; but what moved me was the way his death so beautifully mirrored his life. Sylvia was quoted in the 2002 Book TV interview, "People ask me what is his secret. I think it's that he's surrounded by books, which is his passion. And also surrounded by young people, so it kind of keeps him alive. He's got a buzz for life and so he's--I find him quite inspiring that way."
George Whitman died as he lived, above the bookstore in his tiny apartment facing the Seine and Notre Dame, in a 17th Century building that had once housed the monks of Notre Dame. He died surrounded by books, with his daughter, friends and his dog and cat by his side.
We walked by Thursday to bring Sylvia Whitman a bouquet of roses, and found the store closed, and dozens of people with the same impulse, creating a shrine of flowers, candles, and notes that we all hoped would withstand the near-freezing Paris wind.
George will be buried at Pere-Lachaise, our favorite cemetery, where Balzac, Proust, Oscar Wilde and Apollinaire rest, so we will visit him there, and will continue to greet his spirit at least weekly at Shakespeare, the fiercely independent and magical bookstore where we buy our books.
Reader Comments (30)
Wonderful story and photos! Thanks!!
OK, well, God rest him, one of the secret greats of our time, and really not that secret. I was in Paris a few years ago with wife and daughter, and we naturally went to the bookstore, and George was there, so I introduced myself and mentioned Ferlinghetti had published three of my books, and without a word he plunked a set of keys in my palm to give me a room upstairs to stay in, a legendary room upstairs! A decade or two earlier I might still be there... (I know, there was a time limit and required output) but I told him I was with wife and daughter, so I gave them back to him. He looked at me with those blazing blue eyes of his like lapping ocean waves or, yes, halcyon skies, and went about his business. We hung out at the store and sat in the tiny room to listen to a reader, and I read the line over an archway (I think it was), that goes something like: "Be kind to who you're sitting next to, it might be an angel." With all wishes and prayers and in the memory of George, would someone tell me the exact words? Flights of angels sing him to his rest... (If he decides to hang out now and then at the store... well... those glittering eyes will ever shine...) (God, I hope they were blue...)
we will all miss him, that rascal. how appropriate that he will rest at Pere Lachaise with writers and artists he has loved over the decades. a very moving eulogy to him. thank you. sadly, we are now less one shining light in this City of Lights.
I have always visited Shakespeare & Company when in Paris. George Whitman's spirit and love was a part of every creaky board. Perhaps that will continue to be so. His journey was remarkable and very special. We should all be so blessed.
I just fell in love with a 98-year-old rascal eccentric, and now I mourn his passing as if I'd known him always.
I read a lot of paeans today about Christopher Hitchens. Strange how most of them, however laudatory, diminished the man. They had his soul (so to speak) in their hands -- and they didn't know what to do with it.
You did. And, in what, 500 words?
Beverly, his presence will suffuse the store forever, We expect that Sylvia also has George's genes for bookselling, and longevity, and will gradually become the grande doyenne of the resurrected bookstore, which won't skip a beat as change happens. Shakespeare and Co. is unique, the center of an anglophone community that's become a sublimely French institution.
--Richard and Kaaren
Many thanks, Suki. We hope we conveyed, in a short space, his power and impact on our community. "Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise." Anyone who took that Yeats quote, nay, CHARGE, to heart, and lived it, was no doubt an angel himself, leading the way to a society that will work.
Love,
--Richard and Kaaren
Dear Daniel,
We do believe that you would have been George's favorite kind of person: a published author and friend of Ferlinghetti.
Here is the line (quoting Yeats): “Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise,” one of the signs in his shop.
And yes, those eyes were blue. Your vision of his presence in the bookstore mirrors the vision of the cafe owner, Bertrand Silly, who said BEFORE George died, "I see George as a ghost every day. Even after he's passed away, I'll still see him. You hear him yell up on the fourth floor, then he sticks his head out from the second floor. Then he pops out from the little house. He's like a devil in his box."
If that sounds a bit over-the-top, check out one of the last scenes in the film "Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man," in which George cuts his hair by setting it on fire. It is one infernal image. (The link is in our post.)
I'm sure George feels your blessing through the mythosphere. Thank you, dear friend,
Kaaren & Richard
Dear JT,
That is beautiful. Rascal is the right word. And we were as moved as you are in hearing that he'll be buried in Pere Lachaise.
"sadly, we are now less one shining light in this City of Lights." That says it all.
But we'll continue enjoying what he left behind, won't we!
Much love,
Kaaren & Richard
Anna,
You and George are kindred spirits, generous and original.
He made getting old look like loads of fun.
I registered the headlines about Christopher Hitchens, but we've been too absorbed in George's life to read them yet. It's easy to write about someone's soul if they had as much of it as George Whitman had. Isn't it fascinating how, when someone dies, it's as if a lens comes into focus and you have a sense, a clear picture, of what that life meant to you. His life was very large.
Thank you for your eloquence, Anna.
Love,
Kaaren & Richard
God bless that happy rambler!
Thanks, Kaaren & Richard.
Thank you, Bruce, for a marvelous blessing!
Love,
Kaaren & Richard
After reading about--and enduring--a week filled with some seriously narcissistic, neurotic, and downright hostile shit--this was a perfect "what really matters" reading to reaffirm my faith that yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus(e). Thank you for writing about a man I have never met, nor have I heard of him, but I will honor him in my own way for a long time. I have a feeling I would have loved him, too, because I'm feeling a serious sense of loss...and happiness that there was this light in Paris known as George Whitman. When I make it to Paris, I will visit him. I'll chill with him tonight, too.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We needed that.
My heartfelt condolences go out to his friends and family and anyone else who feels this loss. Hugs.
Kate
Dear Kate,
Hasn't it been a week of strange behavior, though? Something in the heavens, perhaps.
We left out so much, too. He cooked pancakes and Irish stew for all his resident writers and wanderers. He gave everyone a Sunday tea party from 4 to 6. He spent no money on himself, found his clothes at the local version of Good Will.
People were supposed to stay for just one week, but one guy stayed for a year. Another came in as an alcoholic, and left (five years later) as a published writer and translator.
But he didn't think of his gifts as anything special. In the Book TV video, the interviewer asks George, "What's your philosophy of putting people up overnight?" He said, "Well, it's just a simple gesture. If I was an Einstein, and I gave to the world a wonderful theory... but I'm not an Einstein. I'm just a simple, ordinary person. And all I can do is to give them a bed and offer people a cup of tea on Sunday."
Life as giving. Thank you so much, Kate, for your appreciation and condolences to all who will miss George.
Hugs back,
Kaaren (and Richard)
When I was 23 and busking as a dancer in Paris, I found my way to Shakespeare & Co. I was able to stay that night on a little couch. The next day I was told to defrost the refrigerator. In the freezer was a wad of cash and a Swiss Army knife. I handed him the cash and asked if I could keep the knife for my travels. He agreed and put me in the poet's room that very night. His face, I remember.
That is such a great story, Lisa. I can picture you and George perfectly. He was, of course, testing you with the money, and you passed that test, plus, he loved travelers as much as books, so I'm sure he loved your request for a knife for your travels. We will think of you dancing in Paris, every time we see dancers frolicking beside the Seine.
Thanks for sharing this.
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
How fortunate that you & R got to be part of a great French institution before GW went to the great salon in the sky -- hopefully the tradition of writers staying there will continue. He really was one of the great patrons, and it's touching to read that "he used his G.I. Bill benefits to start a small lending library." I never caught sight of the owner when I stopped in but was absolutely enchanted by the fact that he lived in the upstairs apartment overlooking the river. What a long, rich life and legacy.
Vanessa,
"The great salon in the sky!" That's terrific. And patron is right, too. Not only will the tradition of writers staying there continue, but in one video, Sylvia said she'd like to open a cafe at Shakespeare & Co., and a cinema downstairs. A very good life indeed, and his legacy lives on.
We hope to see you in Paris on your way back from Cannes next year.
XO,
Kaaren & Richard
Oh my God! That's remarkable. What a beautiful article. I wonder if you could send it to 89.3, KPFK since I heard [about George's death] on that station. Wow. I'm impressed. It's gorgeous.
Love you!
Carol
Dear Carol,
What a treat to hear from you! Thank you from both of us. Sending the post to KPFK: a great idea, but it sounds like they've already honored George Whitman.
Do not miss seeing the end of "Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man" (see link to video on our post), where George sets his hair on fire as a cheap, quick method of getting a haircut. If you don't have time to watch the full hour, just speed ahead to the last five minutes. You will never forget the image.
Mucho amor,
Kaaren (& Richard)