PARIS – George Whitman’s life was packed with the type of adventures that filled every nook and cranny of his bookshop, Paris’ iconic English-language Shakespeare and Company.
A bohemian traveler, Whitman was once nursed to health by Mayans in the Yucatan during a 3,000-mile (5000-kilometer) trek across Latin America and sometimes bragged that he had lived in Greenland with a beautiful Eskimo woman.
At home, Whitman was best known as a pillar of Paris’ literary scene. For more than half century, his eclectic Left Bank shop was a beacon for readers, who spent long hours browsing its overflowing shelves or curling up with a good book next to a drowsy cat.
Shakespeare and Company was also a haven for every author or would-be writer passing through the City of Light.
For them, Whitman reserved a welcome that turned Yeats’ famous verse — “Be not inhospitable to strangers / Lest they be angels in disguise” — into deed: He took in aspiring writers as boarders in exchange for a helping hand in the store.
Whitman died Wednesday in his apartment above the bookstore, two days after his 98th birthday and two months after suffering a stroke, the store announced on its website.
He “showed incredible strength and
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