“There is a very old bookshop in Le Quartier Latin that I must visit”, I told my companion, “but you don’t have to come if you don’t want to”. I uttered that last part thinking that maybe not so many people would come to Paris to check out an English-language bookshop, albeit old and with a history. We had come to Paris for a Together Day scheduled by the university we work for, and it was the second and last day of our stay.
After a first day that had started with the 5:30 pm taxi to the airport, went on with a massive attendance lunch, followed by a treasure hunt full of queer tasks in Musée d´Orsay and a fancy dinner followed by night party on a boat cruising the Seine, the next one was supposed to be to relax, do some “mandatory” sightseeing, and then pretty much head out back to the airport.
I had never been to Paris, and this had not ceased to surprise almost every single person I shared blatantly it with. Very flatteringly, they all pictured me in Paris as at ease as in a second home. So there I was, never having been to Paris, looking to check out an old bookshop. I was planning on spending a lot of time there, walking among the books and shelves, checking out all the reading corners and passageways. Only this bookshop is so famous it’s a genuine touristic highlight: there was a queue outside, and people waited patiently for their turn to get in. Most of them didn’t linger either, and got in and out as in any other visiting site, some even ignoring the sign asking to try to refrain from taking pictures. But gone were the quiet and emptiness I was expecting from a bookshop, as were the tables and chairs set up outside in pictures I had seen before.
Shakespeare and Company is a bookshop opened in the 50s in the very heart of Paris. The building is old, the space was originally a wine shop, and the original name stems from yet another bookshop, opened by another American in 1919, who was forced to see it shut down during the occupation. Now, it is considered an institution for writers and readers alike.
When I excitedly shared my visit on social media, I was surprised to see that followers and friends took what they saw at face value: here I was again, checking out pretty much any bookshop, even the odd English-language one in Paris, on my leisure time. But they didn’t seem to grasp that this was my very version of a personal cathedral, a mind palace, a most favourite spot: books in English in a Parisian monument, basically. I tried to explain the momentum of this experience for me, but I felt it was just as if I had excitedly talked to other people of a novel that had swept me of my feet. They would watch my charming enthusiasm with patience, but they would fail to completely understand it.
Just as a novel has a different grasp and impact on different people and even on the same people at different times in their life, I also came to see that Paris can be many things to many people. There are people who come to visit the city with a plan in mind, checking and ticking all the sites and monuments, all the places and buildings; there are people who only want to spend lazy afternoons in cafés and bistrots; there are others who want to check out the attractions such as the huge Grande Roue de Paris or the humongous Galéries Lafayette; and yet others who want to take long walks on its boulevards and just stroll from l’Arc du Triomphe to the Eiffel Tower.
Paris was to me that lazy July afternoon I spent in le Quartier Latin, under the unusually scorching sun that had set over the Rive Gauche of the French capital: the stroll I took from Notre Dame to Shakespeare and Company, sipping the iced cream coffee I happily bought in a traditional Vietnamese cafeteria, in remembrance of dear past travels, followed by a long walk along the short and touristy Rue de la Huchette, looking for the narrowest street in Paris, Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche. I ended up in the archeological crypt of Notre-Dame, which turned out to be the best spot to literally chill and read some stuff about the history of the city. After a while, I braced myself and got out and on the metro back to the hotel. It was time well spent, for a first time in Paris.
Nefelibata 