PARIS (Reuters) - The male who nurtured a era of aspiring writers during a precarious English-language bookstore in Paris, charity repast and a bed to novel fans providing they dusted a shelves or penned their memoirs, has died aged 98.
George Whitman, an American, died in a small unit during a tip of his Shakespeare and Company bookstore where he hung with Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac half a century ago and until recently hosted literary tea parties on Sundays for anybody who cared to come by.
Decorated with a French award for his grant to a Paris literary scene, Whitman became a father figure over 6 decades to a tide of would-be writers from around a universe who would twist adult in his second-floor library for weeks on end.
Henry Miller once called his store, open given 1951 on a catchy left bank of a Seine, "A wonderland of books."
"Thousands of people from around a universe ate his clam chowder and strawberry ice cream and survived interjection to his generosity," pronounced Pia Copper, 38, an art play who worked during a store in a 1990s and remained a tighten friend.
"He offering them a probability of vital opposite from Notre Dame for giveaway while they penned their initial novel or embellished a picture. There were a lot of books and poems created there."
The green-fronted store was shuttered on Thursday and well-wishers left votive candles, flowers and novels during a door, where a grave proclamation of his genocide pronounced he would be missed by bibliophiles around a world.
Handwritten tributes cellotaped to a store thanked Whitman for his munificence in providing a breakwater for "aficionados" of novel or apologized for not finishing novels.
"I'm contemptible we was so bad during a communication reading," pronounced one note. Others were left inside a booze bottle whose tag read: "Messages in a bottle: For George. Something for we to review on your trip."
RAG AND BONE
Whitman, who favourite to dub his bookstore "The Rag and Bone store of a heart," after a T.S. Elliot poem, was innate in New Jersey and spent partial of his childhood in China.
After study broadcasting and travelling extensively, he changed to Paris in 1948 with a bicycle and a cat as his usually security and slept in a university garden, as he favourite to tell a story. Once settled, he began collecting books and started a lending library in his grubby hotel digs.
He non-stop his bookshop, "Le Mistral," in 1951 and renamed it several years after as he incorporated books from a strange Shakespeare and Company store busy by James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway before it close down during World War Two.
Opened by American-born Sylvia Beach in a 1920s, also on a Left Bank, a strange store won celebrity for edition James Joyce's criminialized book "Ulysses."
Whitman's emporium became a stopover for writers like Miller, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Anais Nin and after on Lawrence Durrel, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Ginsberg. Beat producer Lawrence Ferlinghetti became one of Whitman's closest friends.
It grew into a traveller landmark and entertainment indicate for Anglophone expatriates, attracting eccentrics, nomads and dreamers. When an American envoy once popped in for a visit, Whitman cheekily offering her a dilemma to nap in.
Living by a sign taken from Yeats -- "Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise" -- Whitman helped out independent souls in lapse for them lending a palm in a emporium or cooking supper. Hundreds left behind handwritten records revelation their life story.
"I was in my early 20s and only arrived in Paris when we wandered in and sat down to read. George seemed and pronounced 'You're an aged China palm like me. You start work tomorrow," pronounced Pia, who was only starting out importing art from China.
Whitman suffered a cadence in October, though refused to stay in hospital. He had an ambulance organisation lift him home, adult dual close flights of stairs and past wall-to-wall bookshelves to his bed, shouting with complacency to be back.
The store was his whole life and he frequency left it, solely to take a peculiar outing to extravagantly outlandish locations, Pia recounted.
Whitman, who penned many essays though never wrote a book of his own, will be buried on Dec 22 in Pere Lachaise cemetery, resting place of such literary luminaries as Oscar Wilde, Moliere and Jim Morrison. His family skeleton to symbol his grave with a statue of Don Quixote, one of his favorite illusory characters.
His daughter Sylvia, who sat during his bedside as he grew weaker though refused to stop reading, will now run a store.
(Additional stating by Tim Hepher, modifying by Paul Casciato)
News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/american-dean-paris-literary-scene-dies-98-141014579.html Also On shopping
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