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Conscious Bob - I admire Sylvia Beach for the person she was and what she contributed to the English language literary community of the Parisian Left Bank. Read the book I mentioned in my previous post or her own book entitled
Shakespeare and Company and you will understand why I feel as I do. She was far more than the original publisher of
Ulysses. In keeping with the many reasons I admire her is included the fact that she never had a bad word to say about Joyce or anyone else for that matter. She was the very epitome of class - a great heart, which deserved better than it found in her treatment by Joyce.
She supported Joyce and his leeching family on practically the entire profits from her humble little shop while Joyce and said family lived a lavish lifestyle buying the finest wines and leaving huge tips at the best restaurants during the writing of
Ulysses and
Finnegan's Wake which he dragged on and on adding to her already huge expenses. She faced down a Gestapo officer during WWII during the occupation of Paris who wanted one of the first copies of F.W. risking reprisal to both herself and her shop by refusing to provide it; in fact, if I remember correctly she was arrested for a short time at one point. She was also instrumental in getting the first printing of
Ulysses smuggled into the USA at a time when the censorship rules forbade its importation. After all of this, when the censorship was finally lifted, that SOB Joyce signed and published
Ulysses with Random House and disavowed any and all debts to Sylvia Beach, may he rot in hell.
From Wikipedia:
Shakespeare and Company gained considerable fame after it published James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922, as a result of Joyce's inability to get an edition out in English-speaking countries. Beach would later be financially stranded when Joyce signed on with another publisher, leaving Beach in debt after bankrolling, and suffering severe losses from, the publication of Ulysses.
It breaks my heart to think that she died poor and alone after having contributed what she could to the many aspiring writers and artists of her times who she outlived - artists, composers, playwrights poets and novelists - some of whom who are now revered as the greatest and most avant-garde of their generation. With the exception of Joyce I'm sure the many others who knew her would acknowledge their debts for her many kindnesses as Hemingway did and when Hemingway takes the time to acknowledge someone you
KNOW they must be very, very special.
EDIT:
From Wikipedia - This is a list of the many people she interacted with, many of whom she provided assistance to in one form or another:
In 1956, Beach wrote Shakespeare and Company, a memoir of the inter-war years that details the cultural life of Paris at the time. The book contains first-hand observations of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Valery Larbaud, Thornton Wilder, André Gide, Leon-Paul Fargue, George Antheil, Robert McAlmon, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Benet, Aleister Crowley, Harry Crosby, Caresse Crosby, John Quinn, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and many others.
