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I first ventured to this region in the early 1980s, long
before Cancún had earned a reputation as a must-see tourist
resort and the region had been dubbed the Riviera Maya.
How did I "discover" Mexico's Quintana Roo?
While living near San Francisco, my home for 20 years, I happened
onto a book at a garage sale titled "The Lost World of Quintana
Roo"' by Frenchman Michel Peissel. Although the book was (and
is) long out of print, the adventure it told of the author,
then a 21-year old Harvard business graduate, who walked from
northern Quintana Roo near Puerto Morelos to Belize
in 1958 fascinated me and triggered a trip to the Mexican Yucatán.
Before this I had always traveled to Mexico's west coast,
but the Mayan pyramids and culture had always been a siren's
song, and finding Peissel's book seemed like fate awaiting action.
In 1999 I wrote a book review for Planeta.com on "The
Lost World of Quintana Roo" and even though long out of
print, the review generated a great deal of interest. Little
did I know that within a few years' time I would stumble onto
another piece of this Mayan puzzle when I opened a bookshop
in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, Alma Libre Libros. Puerto Morelos
is in the heart of Quintana Roo, which Peissel called "the most
savage and wild coast of Central America."
One evening while at the bookstore a woman entered and immediately
announced, "This store is like Shakespeare & Co. in Paris!"
Although I was becoming accustomed to favorable comments about
the bookstore, her remark was an exaggeration. I'd read Hemingway's
"A Moveable Feast" about his salad days in Paris in the 20s
when he frequented Shakespeare & Co.and was lent money by the
owner so he could survive, and to compare our little shop, Alma
Libre Libros in the Yucatán, in a Mexican town with barely a
paved road to one in the tout du monde city of Paris, a writer's
and artist's playground and muse center, well, who was fooling
who?
I politely thanked her and mentally, again, put on my list
of things to do -- See Paris sometime before I die, and visit
Shakespeare & Co. when there. However, being a Third World traveler
my entire life, I did not know when I'd fit in Paris.
The customer continued that when she'd been in Paris, if she
wanted to have that feeling of being home, she'd wander into
Shakespeare & Co. and chat up an American while sorting through
the countless volumes of English language books on hand. In
this way our stores were similiar. Yanks were always wandering
in for information or just to speak in native tongue for a few
minutes.
ACROSS THE POND
Well, this spring I came to Paris. Our hotel, The Esmeralda (named
after Victor Hugo's tragic heroine), looked out at the Notre Dame
Cathedral and sitting just around the corner was Shakespeare &
Co. Bookstore.
I didn't even have to look up the address in a guidebook.
Paul and I wandered in and entered an arena filled with floor-to-ceiling
books -- a reader's dream. New, used, hardback, softback, antiquarian
and rare, every kind of book imaginable was crammed into shelves
and corners. Stacks of books abounded everywhere.
At center stage sat an older gentleman dressed in a time-worn
business suit. He gazed out at Notre Dame in a semi-stare, even
though around him lots was happening. I knew that feeling, bookstore
madness, the daze I always felt mid-day at the shop.
When a customer spoke and removed him from his reverie with
a question, however, he sat up and was instantly on.
"Can I get a discount for this book?" she asked. "Four Euro
seems terribly high.
I looked at Paul, my partner, and watched him tense as we
heard this common litany of the budget traveler. Even though
the shop we were in belonged not to us but to someone else,
we knew what was going through the owner's head. People never
seemed to realize what it cost with shipping and customs to
get an English language book through a foreign system and into
a customer's hands for under $5 US, plus still pay rent and
electricity.
"Four Euro," the response.
At this point, Paul introduced himself, "We have a bookstore
in Mexico, the Yucatán. It's the largest English language bookstore
from Mexico City to Central America, and we hear that all the
time. I guess people have no clue what it takes to get books
shipped into a foreign country.
"Mexico?" the apparent owner of the bookshop replied. "What
part of Mexico?"
"Quintana Roo," I answered. "Puerto Morelos, a little fishing
village."
"Quintana Roo! I walked through the jungles of Quintana Roo
when I was young. I planned to spend seven years walking around
the world on foot and managed to get through Mexico and Latin
America. I helped build the bridge between Belize and Mexico,
at the border town, Chetumal!
"I know the bridge," I said. "I was detained there once by
immigration. And I wrote a book review a few years ago by a
Frenchman named Michel Peissel who walked from northern Quintana
Roo to Belize in 1958. Maybe you know the book."
"I'm familiar with the book. I know Michel Peissel" answered
the bookstore owner, who I found out was George Whitman, proprietor
of the shop for over 50 years, on Paris' Left Bank, facing Notre
Dame Cathedral. "He came into the store and I told him I had
read his book of travels in Quintana Roo and had hoped to someday
meet him. He told me we had already met when he was a student
years earlier. He said he frequented the store and the books
he read here inspired him to become an explorer. He has now
published 18 books.
"Aaah, Quintana Roo. When I was there I stayed with an indian
in his palapa, then went onto Campeche. There were no roads
in Campeche at the time. Not one."
"Was that right after the Caste War? It ended around 1940"
"I guess so," said Whitman. "Listen, do you have a place to
stay?"
"We're at The Esmeralda right around the corner."
"Because I always have space for writers and journeyers, people
who are on their way somewhere."
KILOMETER ZERO
Whitman, a native of Massachusetts, will be 90 in December, and
has made a career of supplying books to the masses and has created
a gathering spot for writers and poets in Paris; a place where
they can exchange ideas. He has been declared by the French Ministry
of Culture to be "a historic monument of Paris" and Henry Miller
called Whitman's three floor bookstore "a wonderland of books,"
for that is what it is.
Apparently George Whitman discovered Quintana Roo's "lost
world" long before Michel Peissel and, in fact, may have inspired
Peissel to put on hold his Harvard business degree for a year
while he trapsed the jungles of Mexico's Yucatán. Without Whitman's
influence, would Peissel have even ventured to Mexico's Quintana
Roo?
Whitman's personal motto for the store is "Kilometer Zero
-- Where the streets of the world meet avenues of the mind."
He has created this space to preserve a place for those who
love to read, write and create. The store harks back to earlier
times, when the Hemingways and Kerouacs of the world stalked
the world's cultural vortexes, absorbing all they could to ignite
and inspire them. In this handful of cities they could find
kindred spirits which added to their creative juices. Whitman
himself is from a different era -- pre internet -- an era when
creative minds would chat in person, not from behind screens
and keyboards.
In meeting Whitman I realized that I belong to unique,small
fraternity of souls whose love for books has first driven us
to pathos, then to an insatiable desire. We opened bookstores
to allow our minds to mingle with the thoughts and words and
philosophies -- on a daily basis -- with the likes of James
Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Virginia
Wolfe, and on and on and on. We could share space with these
literary dignitaries as we walked between the shelves in our
stores. Although a loose-knit group, we are all brothers and
sisters under the skin.
Coming to Paris, discovering for myself Shakespeare & Co,
one of the world's most reknowned bookstores and the largest
English language bookstore on the European continent, and to
meet owner George Whitman was synchronicity at its finest.
Suffice it to say, life has no coincidences.
FOOTNOTE
Shortly after writing my review of The Lost World of Quintana
Roo I received an email from author Michel Peissel thanking me
for writing it. I showed a copy of this letter to Whitman who
was delighted to see a reference to an old friend. If you are
interested in helping George Whitman preserve Shakespeare & Co.
as the world landmark it has become and to help him put""pennies
in his wishing well" so that the bookstore can continue on always
as it is now, write to him at Shakespeare & Co., 37 Rue de la
Bucherie, 75005, Paris , France, where over the door you will
read, "Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in
disguise." |
