Before I share more quotes from Shakespeare and Company, I’d like to offer a brief review. I’m not one to offer rankings for books, but I can say that this book is one of those rare gems that will be referred to in my conversations for years to come. It’s not that it’s so well-written (my apologies, Ms. Beach, as it certainly was not poorly-written), it’s that the characters and Beach’s way of observing their interactions are gorgeous. It is multi-dimensional and encompasing in a way that Hemingway’s, or any other author’s, diaries and letters are not. Overall, I’d say that this book provided me with the most pleasurable reading of 2005.

More great quotes from Shakespeare and Company:

122: George [Antheil] gave me a valuable suggestion for getting rid of my books. He offered to give all the volumes in the window more exciting titles. They would sell right off, he said, and when I heard some of the unmentionable titles he proposed, I thought it quite likely that they would.

130: Shakespeare and Company was in close touch with the small presses in Paris that published books in English. A pioneer among them was Robert McAlmon’s Contract Publishing Company; he announced his plans in the first number of F. M. Ford’s Transatlantic Review:

At intervals of two weeks to six months, or six years, we will bring out books by various writers who seem not likely to be published by other publishers, for commercial or legislative reasons. . . . Three hundred only of each book will be printed. These books are published simply because they are written, and we like them well enough to get them out.

Sylvia Beach inside Shakespeare and Company (no date)

154: Seeing me writing something, [Erik] Satie asked me if I wrote. I said yes, business letters. He said that was the best kind of writing: good business writing had a definite meaning; you had something to say and you said it. That was the way I wrote, I told him.

James Joyce inside Shakespeare and Company (1938)

175: Joyce wanted not only his poems, but his other works, too, sold at low prices that those he considered his real readers could pay. But they were often published in a particular manner and regardless of expense to his publishers. If he had paid more attention to our problems, it would have made it easier for us. But this was a matter to which he was completely indifferent. So, either you run your publishing business far away, where your writer can’t get at it, or you publish right alongside of him – and have much more fun – and much more expense.

216: My friends and I carried all the books and all the photographs upstairs, mostly in clothesbaskets; and all the furniture. We even removed the electric-light fixtures. I had a carpenter take down the shelves. Within two hours, not a single thing was to be seen in the shop, and ahouse painter had painted out the name, Shakespeare and Company, on the front of 12 rue de l’Odéon. The date was 1941. Did the Germans come to confiscate Shakespeare and Company’s goods? If so, they never found the shop.

Ernest Hemingway inside Shakespeare and Company (1921)

219-220: There was still a lot of shooting going on in the rue de l’Odéon, and we were getting tired of it, when one day a string of jeeps came up the street and stopped in front of my house. I heard a deep voice calling: “Sylvia!” And everybody in the street took up the cry of “Sylvia!”
“It’s Hemingway! It’s Hemingway!” cried Adrienne. I flew downstairs; we met with a crash; he picked me up and swung me around and kissed me while people on the street and in the windows cheered.
We went up to Adrienne’s apartment and sat Hemingway down. He was in battle dress, grimy and bloody. A machine gun clanked on the floor. He asked Adrienne for a piece of soap, and she gave him her last cake.
He wanted to know if there was anything he culd do for us.We asked him if he could do something about the Nazi snipers on the roof tops in our street, particularly on Adrienne’s roof top. He got his company out of the jeeps and took them up to the roof. We heard firing for the last time in the rue de l’Odéon.