Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere)’s Reviews > Shakespeare and Company > Status Update

During Liberation: "In the mornings, toward 11 o'clock, the Nazis sallied forth from the Luxembourg with their tanks and went down the Boulevard Saint Michel, shooting here and there. Rather disagreeable for those of us who were lined up at the bakery at the bread hour."

The Germans shut down her shop, and eventually came for her: "After six months in an internment camp, I was back in Paris but with a paper stating that I could be taken again by the German military authorities at any time they saw fit. My friends agreed that, instead of waiting to be sent back, I should "disappear.""

"When the United States came into the war, my nationality, added to my Jewish affiliations, finished Shakespeare and Company in Nazi eyes. We Americans had to declare ourselves at the Kommandatur and register once a week at the Commissary in the section of Paris where we lived. (Jews had to sign every day.) There were so few Americans that our names were in a sort of scrapbook that was always getting mislaid."

During the Occupation: "I had a volunteer helper, a young Jewish friend, Francoise Bernheim. A student of Sanscrit, but now excluded from the Sorbonne by the Nazi laws, she was encouraged by her professor to copy notes taken by her non-Jewish friends, and, with his help and theirs, she was persevering in her studies."

"People imagined, perhaps, that I was making a lot of money from Ulysses. Well, Joyce must have kept a magnet in his pocket that attracted all the cash Joycewards. ...All that was available from his work, and I managed to keep it available, was his. But it was all I could do to prevent my bookshop from getting sucked under."

"Actually, I think the banning of Ulysses was a fortunate thing. So great a writer might otherwise have waited several hundred years to become famous except in the comparatively small group that will go in for a Ulysses. But Joyce always considered himself a victim of persecution. I wondered if he was ever that."

p 179-182 - great info on piracy of Joyce's works. It's almost funny to read that pirates then were saying the same things as today - that they're really fans of the artist, that the artist and publisher already have enough money and this couldn't hurt them, etc.

"If the food is nice, no other thoughts should intrude; if there is a conversation, whether on business or on art, one listens attentively, and how can one do that and at the same time enjoy nice food? I always noticed that the French at table wouldn't discuss anything, except perhaps the food, till after the second helping, when one could begin to think of something else."

"In 1924, I went to the office of His Master's Voice in Paris to ask them if they would record a reading by James Joyce from Ulysses. ...His Master's Voice would agree to record the Joyce reading only if it were done at my expense. The record would not have their label on it, nor would it be listed in their catalogue."