I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life

So said George Whitman, the owner of Shakespeare and Company, the famous Parisian English-language bookstore. Whitman died this week, at the age of  98. You can read his obituary here. I visited Shakespeare and Co. nearly thirty years ago and still remember it like a dream.

Thanks to T. Clear, I watched this fascinating video about Whitman and his bookstore -- if you're interested in literature and Paris and strange casts of characters, watch it -- the end is particularly wild.