The Piano Ninja of Paris
Like a Leonard Cohen song, as well as being a little cheesy, Paris' Shakespeare and Co is also great. As a pure bookstore it holds its own, but it's more than that. For tourists and expats alike, the famously dingy little Anglophone bookstore opposite the cathedral on the banks of the Seine is a sanctuary, a place to reconnect with one's own culture, a refuge in which to take a break from the constant effort of having to speak, or feign speaking, a foreign language.
When I was living in Paris and writing my novel, I liked to go there Sunday afternoons as the natural bookend to the long walks I took through that part of town, where much of my novel is set. The place is a warren, packed floor-to-ceiling with books new and old, from standard tourist fare to the classics to rarities and obscurities.
Upstairs, there are more rooms with seats in all kinds of nooks and crannies where one can sit and read for hours on end. There are old copies of the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. The smell of old paper is strong. The atmosphere is hushed, but the tramping of shoes up and down the stairs is constant. Travelers with nowhere to stay can crash here in exchange for some work.
Shakespeare and Co is almost always packed with tourists, but when I mentioned it to locals, I was always surprised by how little known it is by bookish Parisians. It belongs squarely in the Anglo-American mythology of Paris, along with Hemingway, Joyce and Beckett, which is a markedly different mythology to that of the French, without little overlap other than Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus.
One Sunday, standing at a rack of second-hand books on the terrace outside the store, I saw Owen Wilson lock up his bike outside the shop and head inside. I was leafing through a copy of the remarkable Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence and suddenly had an epiphany about a difficult scene I had been labouring over for two weeks. Such epiphanies would take over my whole body and, when they came, would trigger a rush of euphoria that would make my eyes well up with tears. I had to put my sunglasses on so that Owen wouldn't see that I was crying.
On another occasion, I was upstairs reading Hemingway's very readable early 1920s journalism on Paris. Hemingway claims the reason so many North Americans stayed in Paris after World War One was fixed exchange rates - 12 francs to the American dollar. That meant an American might live a year in Paris for $1,000. In 1922, the average teacher's income in the US was $1,100. Interestingly, the state-by-state figures vary widely between $448 in Mississippi and $1,858 in Guam. Hemingway thought that was cheap, but in fact Paris is cheaper now. The average high school teacher's salary in the US is now about $46,000. Guam's figure, at $34,738, is among the lowest, although the very lowest is Puerto Rico's at $22,164.
To modernise Hemingway's figures, it is entirely possible to live just as cheaply in Paris now as it was then. Ernest and his first wife Haddy lived in a hotel. These days, two young lovers with heads full of Gallic dreams would probably be better off finding a medium-term rental on AirBnB. They could keep things affordable by shopping at the street markets and cooking for themselves - thereby not just saving money but also partaking in one of Paris' headiest pleasures.
As I read Hemingway on Paris, I heard muffled piano music wafting from the nearby piano room (where I myself would occasionally play). I realised I couldn't tell if the piano music I was hearing was a recording or being played right there and then. I went inside the piano room (also filled with shelves of old hardbacks) and noticed that the piano player was dressed like a homeless person. He was wearing one of those shapeless khaki anoraks with hoodies, baggy pants and sandals with socks.
The tramp played a tender form of jazz piano in the style of Bill Evans for more than two hours without any printed music and without stopping - and he was already in full flight when I arrived. I couldn't see his face. All I could see were his black fingers poking out of gloves with scissored fingertips. The only thing I could say about him with any certainty was that he was a man. I move my body about a lot when I play, but his body was still. He didn't use the pedals - his sandaled feet were planted squarely on the tattered rug underneath. It was a unforgettable, virtuoso performance, made more remarkable by the stream of unsuspecting tourists shuffling in and out of the room.
When he was finished he stood, turned and left. I finally saw his face: he was an old man with a silver beard. I thanked him. He wished me 'Bonne soirée' in such a quiet, husky voice I didn't hear what kind of accent he had. And then he was gone. Many months later, I was telling someone about the piano-player from Paris. She told me it was most likely Cecil Taylor, a pioneer of free jazz.
When I was living in Paris and writing my novel, I liked to go there Sunday afternoons as the natural bookend to the long walks I took through that part of town, where much of my novel is set. The place is a warren, packed floor-to-ceiling with books new and old, from standard tourist fare to the classics to rarities and obscurities.
Upstairs, there are more rooms with seats in all kinds of nooks and crannies where one can sit and read for hours on end. There are old copies of the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. The smell of old paper is strong. The atmosphere is hushed, but the tramping of shoes up and down the stairs is constant. Travelers with nowhere to stay can crash here in exchange for some work.
Shakespeare and Co is almost always packed with tourists, but when I mentioned it to locals, I was always surprised by how little known it is by bookish Parisians. It belongs squarely in the Anglo-American mythology of Paris, along with Hemingway, Joyce and Beckett, which is a markedly different mythology to that of the French, without little overlap other than Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus.
One Sunday, standing at a rack of second-hand books on the terrace outside the store, I saw Owen Wilson lock up his bike outside the shop and head inside. I was leafing through a copy of the remarkable Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence and suddenly had an epiphany about a difficult scene I had been labouring over for two weeks. Such epiphanies would take over my whole body and, when they came, would trigger a rush of euphoria that would make my eyes well up with tears. I had to put my sunglasses on so that Owen wouldn't see that I was crying.
On another occasion, I was upstairs reading Hemingway's very readable early 1920s journalism on Paris. Hemingway claims the reason so many North Americans stayed in Paris after World War One was fixed exchange rates - 12 francs to the American dollar. That meant an American might live a year in Paris for $1,000. In 1922, the average teacher's income in the US was $1,100. Interestingly, the state-by-state figures vary widely between $448 in Mississippi and $1,858 in Guam. Hemingway thought that was cheap, but in fact Paris is cheaper now. The average high school teacher's salary in the US is now about $46,000. Guam's figure, at $34,738, is among the lowest, although the very lowest is Puerto Rico's at $22,164.
To modernise Hemingway's figures, it is entirely possible to live just as cheaply in Paris now as it was then. Ernest and his first wife Haddy lived in a hotel. These days, two young lovers with heads full of Gallic dreams would probably be better off finding a medium-term rental on AirBnB. They could keep things affordable by shopping at the street markets and cooking for themselves - thereby not just saving money but also partaking in one of Paris' headiest pleasures.
As I read Hemingway on Paris, I heard muffled piano music wafting from the nearby piano room (where I myself would occasionally play). I realised I couldn't tell if the piano music I was hearing was a recording or being played right there and then. I went inside the piano room (also filled with shelves of old hardbacks) and noticed that the piano player was dressed like a homeless person. He was wearing one of those shapeless khaki anoraks with hoodies, baggy pants and sandals with socks.
The tramp played a tender form of jazz piano in the style of Bill Evans for more than two hours without any printed music and without stopping - and he was already in full flight when I arrived. I couldn't see his face. All I could see were his black fingers poking out of gloves with scissored fingertips. The only thing I could say about him with any certainty was that he was a man. I move my body about a lot when I play, but his body was still. He didn't use the pedals - his sandaled feet were planted squarely on the tattered rug underneath. It was a unforgettable, virtuoso performance, made more remarkable by the stream of unsuspecting tourists shuffling in and out of the room.
When he was finished he stood, turned and left. I finally saw his face: he was an old man with a silver beard. I thanked him. He wished me 'Bonne soirée' in such a quiet, husky voice I didn't hear what kind of accent he had. And then he was gone. Many months later, I was telling someone about the piano-player from Paris. She told me it was most likely Cecil Taylor, a pioneer of free jazz.
