Shakespeare & Co

Between you and me, there is another reason for my month spent wandering the streets of Paris (other than mangling the language and pretending to be la belle Parisienne that is)

Like countless Left Bank residents before me I am a tortured writer. Tortured in the sense that I have rarely written anything worth reading. Tortured in the sense that I can never seem to come up with any original or creative (or preferably both) ideas. And tortured in the sense that I wish to one day torture some sort of unsuspecting reader (much like you are being tortured now I suspect...).

And so I have come to the left bank of Paris, and in particular St Germain des Pres and its bohemian neighbour, the Latin Quarter, to be creatively inspired, hopefully, by the ghosts of artists and writers such as Picasso, Victor Hugo and Hemmingway....surely it is here that creative inspiration must simply float in the air.

In the shadow of the Notre Dame, tucked away in a corner beside the Seine lies a little English bookshop called 'Shakespeare and Co'. Eccentric and lovable the bookshop has been around (albeit in two different locations) for almost a century and the building that houses it now is surely centuries old.

The ceilings are low and rickety and the air is musty with the scent of old books and history. Books of all shapes and sizes, old and new of every genre are stacked high on the shelves and on the floor...to get past them is an effort - but if you do you're likely to find yourself in a little nook or cranny, perhaps with a tiny wooden bench where you can while away the hours with a story plucked from the shelves.

Once upon a time the bookshop housed the great literary names of our time...and perhaps the not so great...penniless authors who were housed here in exchange for a bit of help in the store.

Today, the bookshop houses a new generation of dreamers...walk up to the second floor (if you can get past the piles of books on the stairs) and you may stumble across travelling writers with laptops and sleeping bags...a hippie commune maybe - but a creative one.

Tonight, I went along to breath in some inspiration and perhaps to be inspired in a somewhat more literal sense. Though I had never heard of him I had read in the window on Sunday as I passed by that a young British novelist by the name of Adam Thirlwell would be reading sections of his latest work tonight, signing a few books and perhaps answering a few questions. Mr Thirlwell, the sign said, has been included in a list of Britain's 20 top young novelists...I figured I could do worse than try and learn something from him.

So along I went to perch on a stool in a ricketty old english bookshop in Paris, contentedly listening to a respected modern novelist read humourous pieces from his latest published book as well as some as yet unpublished work and then discuss them with modesty and intelligence (he was educated at Oxford after all...).

I realised two things - perhaps I will never be the novelist this man is...and perhaps that doesn't matter. But I'm sure my Parisian bookshop experience will find itself in a piece of my own one day...this is the stuff stories are made of and the inspiration simply floated on the air.

Till next time...