EDDIE WOODS on George Whitman and his notoriously wonderful Left Bank bookshop Shakespeare&Co.
My first meeting with George Whitman, and his shop, was in the winter of 1978. My then-wife (and still closest friend) Jane Harvey and I had just split Amsterdam. We’d done three issues of Ins & Outs magazine and thought 'finito, we’re leaving for good.’ Vicissitudes proved us wrong, but that’s another story. We were in Paris and once more hitting the road. Our first night was passed at the Rue St. Denis flat of a French photographer acquaintance. Yet one night was all she and her boyfriend could handle as far as visitors were concerned. So, come morning, Jane and I grabbed our gear and started wandering about the city. We had both seen Paris, years before we met one another; but neither of us could say we really knew the place. I can’t say that now, though I’ve been many times. I mean, even for a native New Yorker it’s big.
