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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today we begin a new series, an American bookworm in Paris, recorded recently when, as a guest

of the cultural services of the French embassy, I was in Paris for the very first time.

The programs will air intermittently over the next few months.

In this first program, I have two guests.

First, Sylvia Whitman of the legendary bookstore Shakespeare and Company.

Then I'll speak with Francois Coussé, author of the book French Theory,

how Foucault, Derrida, De Luz, and Company transform the intellectual life of the United States.

No trip to Paris would be complete for a book lover without a visit to Shakespeare and Company, which is in the Latin Quarter. When was it founded?

The current Shakespeare Company was founded in 51 and the original Shakespeare Company in 1919.

You're hearing Sylvia Whitman, who is the daughter of George Whitman, who founded the store in 1951.

Its original version was founded by Sylvia Beach and her partner, and together they had

published the very first edition of Ulysses, which was published in Paris through a printer here.

It's said to have many, many misprints, which are still being corrected from addition to

addition. Now, this is an English language bookstore in Paris. What was its founding goals and

purpose?

Well, if we go back to Sylvia Beach, I think people say that her bookshop was more of a lending library than a bookshop.

So I think her goal, well, I know from reading her memoir, that her goal was to make an exchange between French and American

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