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Time Was Soft There: a Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. Free FREE TIME WAS SOFT THERE: A PARIS SOJOURN AT SHAKESPEARE & CO. PDF Jeremy Mercer | 260 pages | 19 Sep 2006 | St Martin's Press | 9780312347406 | English | New York, United States Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer The lowest-priced brand-new, unused, unopened, undamaged item in its original packaging where packaging is applicable. Packaging should be the same as what is found in a retail store, unless the item is handmade or was packaged by the manufacturer in non-retail packaging, such as an unprinted box or plastic bag. See details for additional description. Skip to main content. About this product. Stock photo. Brand new: Lowest price The lowest-priced brand-new, unused, unopened, undamaged item in its original packaging where packaging is applicable. Catalogue Number: Format: BOOK. Missing Information?. See all 7 brand new listings. Buy It Now. Add to cart. Mercer bought a book, and the staff invited him up for tea. Within weeks, he was living above the store, working for the proprietor, George Whitman, patron saint of the city's down-and-out writers, and immersing himself in the love affairs and low-down watering holes of the shop's makeshift staff. Time Was Soft There is the story of a journey down a literary rabbit hole in the shadow of Notre Dame, to a place where a hidden bohemia still thrives. Time Was Soft Therewill likely be the last firsthand account of an aging legend. A great read, both funny and quietly moving. Time Was Soft There will likely be the last firsthand account of an aging legend. Show More Show Less. Any Condition Any Condition. See all 14 - All listings for this product. No ratings or reviews yet No ratings or reviews yet. Be the first to write Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. review. Best Selling in Nonfiction See all. Bill o'Reilly's Killing Ser. When Women Pray Hardcover T. Jakes Christian Inspirational No ratings or reviews yet. Save on Nonfiction Trending price is based on prices over last 90 days. Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. may also like. Paris Paperback Books. Mercer Mayer Paperback Books. William Shakespeare Paperback Books. Paperback William Shakespeare Books. Illustrated Paperback William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare Paperbacks Books. This item doesn't belong on this page. Be the first to write a review About this product. Time Was Soft There a Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare Co - AbeBooks Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Originally founded in by Sylvia Beach, she was the first to distribute Ulysses by joyce, and counted among her friends Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. After her death, George Whitman bought the stock and re-founded his own shop in homage to hers. Whitman had always been a wanderer, walking all over the States, Mexico and Central America. He called them Tumbleweeds; they had few responsibilities, but they included, producing a short autobiography, helping out in the bookshop for a few hours a day and reading a book a day. Mercer started out as a journalist, reporting court cases and other news items for a local paper. Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. a run in with a criminal contact he decided that he need to leave Canada for his own safety. Arriving in Paris he turns up at the bookshop as he has heard Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. it Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. be a refuge. Whitman says he can stay for a while, and says he can stay in the Antiquarian room, but he must say to the current resident, a poet called Simon, that after five years it is time for him to move on. Simon proves elusive, and when he does catch up with him to pass on the news he seems distraught. As he settles into Paris life and the bookshop, he starts to befriend the other people that are living there. Whitman is a man who collects favourites, Mercer becomes one at one point, before the latest new member overtakes him. It is a bit chaotic, he is forever leaving money in books, there are a number of thefts from unguarded tills, and there are always new people and others moving on. They have to Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. places to shower and bathe and having very little money himself, he is taught by Kurt the cheapest and best places to eat from. And in this place of misfits, great things have emerged. It is thought that at least seven books have been written there, and many times that have been started or conceived. It was a really lovely book to read. Mercer has brought the bookshop and its many characters to life and gives us a flavour of Parisian life at the time. There are some funny parts too as they sail a little too close to the law. Whitman is quite a man too, flawed but generous, this bookshop that he has given to the world is now in safe hands as his daughter is now running it. Must pay it a visit one day. A community hub, a haven, a platform for cultural ideas. A centre of dissent and radicalism. Mercer fled to Paris with little money and no prospects. Like so many young people in Paris under similar circumstances, Mercer found his way to Shakespeare and Company. For decades Whitman, a devoted socialist, had operated the bookstore as a free boardinghouse for "mavericks and nomads," with preference given to aspiring writers. Over the years some 40, people had spent nights in the bookstore, some for years at a time, sleeping wherever they could find room. He was in his mids when Mercer was his guest, but still not nearly old enough to be the poet's son. Despite his socialist ideals, Whitman enforced a class system in his shop, allowing those he judged to be the best writers to use actual bedrooms on the upper floors, while others, like Mercer, had to look for space on the floor. Whitman also favored new guests over those he was starting to get tired of and attractive women over everybody else. Even at 86 he was still falling desperately in love with young women. Whitman, Mercer tells us, was also a petty thief, stealing from his own guests. His favorite reading in his own bookstore were the diaries he stole from women who stayed with him. Mercer describes Whitman wrestling with a priest over a book being sold cheaply at a book sale. He wanted the book to resale in his shop. The priest presumably wanted to read it. For all Whitman's faults, Mercer came to admire him and to want to help him protect the future of the store, which was being sought by developers because of its prime location. Mercer was able to track down Whitman's daughter, his only child and the product of his brief marriage to one of the Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. he fell in love with in his store. Today, following Whitman's death inSylvia Whitman operates the store. Mercer's title refers to prison slang. For prisoners there is hard time and then there is soft time. At Shakespeare and Company, he says, time was soft. I visited Shakespeare and Company when I was last in Paris two summers ago. How I wish I had read Mercer's book first. Thoroughly disappointed in what I had hoped would be a memoir about working and living in a bookstore instead of the territorial shenanigans and drama between its employees. Perhaps I had a rather romantic view of what this book would be, but I just found the execution rather tedious and annoying. It's a lot less about the bookstore and books than it is about the people who work there. I suppose that it makes for more interesting reading, but I was not at all interested in the escape from the past background of the narrator, or his romantic entanglements, or his territorial powerplays with the other residents. Anything, such as how they were run, the corporate nature of large chains vs. That was not the focus here, unfortunately. This was more about the author exercising his own personal demons. There's a whiff of a "Gary Sue" to him that just doesn't make me root for him. I personally disliked his anecdote of revealing a prominent doctor seeing prostitutes. The doctor staged a successful PR campaign that even turned the newspaper against Mercier and his reporting partner. They claimed that this was a health risk and of public interest. Uh, no. Health risk possibly, but not of public interest. He thanks the store and George for his Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. there, but it's just not a compelling read. I'm mad I bought it. Library book for sure. HoldMyBook Feb 11, This should be a great book. I wanted it to be, like, so bad. Its a true ish? The store itself is legendary. Doesn't work that way though. I can recommend the visit. You get a free cookie. Lukewarm tea. A lab pup that buggers off with one of your mittens. A memory, a story, but not a book, or a novel, or whatever Jeremey was shooting for with this one. Too bad. He has skill, his material is a rich vein of solid gold, but his own persona too often becomes the theme.
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