Quartier de la Sorbonne

Shakespeare and Company's second act came much later.

George Whitman, a former army medic who reached Paris on the GI Bill, studied at the Sorbonne and stocked his shelves with books bought on the same benefits.

In 1951, he opened Le Mistral in a former Algerian grocery at 37 Rue de la Boucherie, an early 17th century building on a monastery site facing Notre-Dame at Kilometer Zero, the point from which French roads begin.

In April 1964, on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, he renamed it Shakespeare and Company, reportedly with Beech's blessing.

And in fact, perhaps actually we could experiment with trying to create, construct situations now, which is partly what things such as the derive is, and we could talk a little bit more about, about the derive, et cetera.

And then even, you know, perhaps May '68, you know, in Paris, et cetera, you know, then you could see, you know, all of the debates in the, the Sorbonne, et cetera, and all this huge in- intense political discussion, and everybody getting caught up by the passions of the moment, et cetera, and that, that, you know, perhaps that would be a construction of a situation, basically.

Or that's ...

That construction of situations is one of the ways in which you could understand that.

It's almost like that he's been infected by these cranks, do you know what I mean? And he can't help but, like, anti- articulate their worldview.

And that is what, it's one of the runners up, basically.

The whole '68, it starts with a whole series of, like, um, student revolts around stuff like this and in, like, in the Sorbonne, et cetera, about, like, you know, whether men or women can go into the same dorm at the same time, et cetera.

Things lost in the, the mists of history now, I think.