feeling listless

Commerce Before I visited Paris I always heard tell of a bookshop, 'Shakespeare & Co' which had berths were apiring writers could sleep providing their were looking for inspiration in the city streets and would help out in the shop for a few hours a day. My tired feet couldn't ever trundle much further than the tourist traps so I missed visiting the shop myself. I'm still disappointed that I could visit, but this virtual tour helps a bit. Literary Traveller's ongoing series of article about Earnest Hemmingway offers a good potted history of the place. It seems this isn't the original which was eventually closed by the Nazi's when the owner, Sylvia Beach refused to sell an German officer her last copy of 'Finnigan’s Wake'. Hemmingway was a regular customer and helped with the re-opening of that original shop. The current premises were another shop, renamed by a friend of Beech, George Whitman as a tribute after her birth, and he estimates that over 10,000 writers have slept amongst the stacks for at least one night. All have left a photo and short biography, some very famous names amongst them.