Connected to the Lost Generation

When I was in sixth grade my sister, Emily, was studying in Switzerland for the year.  During Christmas break we met her in Paris.  Of all the places we went, my mom’s favorite place was a very crowded bookstore called Shakespeare and Company.  This bookstore was opened many years ago on a different street in Paris by an American woman named Sylvia Beach.  It was an English language bookstore, and it became very popular.  Many of the writers and other people who were part of the “lost generation” hung out there, including Ernest Hemingway.  After WWII a man named George Whitman opened a new Shakespeare and Company right across from Notre Dame Cathedral.  We have a book called Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation which includes pictures of him at the old store. He and Sylvia were great friends.   There were many Americans living in Paris at that time.  There were many other famous writers there such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.   When I read The Sun Also Rises I could picture the characters at the cafes and bars there.  We have a photo taken in front of Les Deux Magots which is a café Hemingway liked to go to.  It’s on a corner with many tables and chairs outside.  This is the type of place where Jake, Robert Cohn, Brett and the others would have sat and ordered drinks.  Hemingway experienced many of the things he wrote about in The Sun Also Rises.  I can imagine why the “lost generation” Americans would want to live in such a beautiful city as Paris