Category Archives: movies

So my friend Katie, who is living in Paris for the year, posted this video on a friends wall, and I absolutely love it. It takes place in the bookstore Shakespeare and Company.

(Watch the full video by clicking on that link below)
Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi

When I saw this, I thought about That Summer in Paris by Morley Callaghan, a memoir about Morley’s friendships with Hemingway and Fitzgerald in the summer of 1929.. in Paris. I was thinking that Shakespeare and Company was the bookstore that is refers to multiple times. So instead of looking in the book that was right next to me, I googled it.

And I found a blog which cited a bunch of sources on the topic of Paris in the 1920’s. The Phd that has the blog even does presentations on the topic.

So I was pretty sad when I read her annotation of That Summer in Paris, “Morley Callaghan. That Summer in Paris. New York:  Coward-McCann, 1963. Callaghan was the timekeeper for the famous Hemingway-Fitzgerald boxing match, and he’s dined out on that story for years. A lovely memoir of a memorable summer.”

I underlined all the things that are wrong in that paragraph. Callaghan and Hemingway were the ones boxing together and they did so quiet often. Fitzgerald only accompanied them once as a timekeeper (and not a really good one.) I do have to agree that it is a lovely memoir on a memorable summer.