Like so many Americans Jim Carroll loves Paris. Carroll also loves books, particularly those of a used and rare vintage. One of his lifelong goals has been to own a used bookstore so he could have access to books in unlimited quantities and could then leisurely pick and choose what he wanted to read.Now, Carroll has combined these two passions. He owns two used bookstores -- one in the heart of Paris.
In October 1997, Carroll (whose Carroll's Books is in San Francisco's North Beach) and an American expatriate partner opened up the San Francisco Book Co. in Paris's storied Left Bank. The opening represented not only the realization of a life's dream but a personal triumph over daunting French bureaucracy.
One of the first things to strike customers about the San Francisco Book Co., located at 17 rue Monsieur le Prince, in Paris's Sixth Arrondissement, is the window display of books about the San Francisco Bay Area. "We're trying to keep a California feeling," notes Carroll.
When he first got the idea to open a bookstore in Paris, Carroll thought he would mostly attract American tourists and Americans living there.
So far, it has been the French, many not speaking any English, who have been the store's chief customers. Their lack of English d sn't seem to deter them. "They're fascinated by America and by books about America," said Carroll. The French particularly love books about the American West. They're also drawn to books on American history, film and African-American studies. Recently, Carroll reports, American science fiction has also begun selling briskly.
Located near the Sorbonne, the San Francisco Book Co. also draws in French academics, who buy and sell scholarly English-language books.
Carroll still is hopeful that the store can eventually become "a home away from home" for Americans in Paris. The number of Americans stopping in has been growing -- although, he concedes, some of them have just been homesick, and were cheered by the sight of all those American titles, while others were lost and came in to ask directions.
The San Francisco Book Co. is located two blocks away from the site of Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Co., the bookstore and lending library that became one of the symbols of 1920s literary Paris and a magnet for the lost generation of American writers who flocked to the city after World War I. Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Ezra Pound and many others all came by to borrow hard-to-find English books, listen to readings, or use the shop as a convenient delivery point for their mail. The shop stayed open from 1919 until 1941, when, during the World War II German occupation of the city, Beach had to close down and go into hiding from the Gestapo.
Carroll likes to see himself and the San Francisco Book Co. as continuing in the tradition of Sylvia Beach. "She is my literary antecedent," he says. Carroll's motives for starting the bookstore certainly were not financial -- he'll be happy to break even. But rather, he says, he wanted to be "involved, to participate in the literary culture of Paris." Intellectual respect, he says, has always been more important to the French than commercial success, and "owning a bookstore garners ultimate respect."
A soft-spoken man of 50, Carroll has been in the book business for more than 20 years. As a college student and after, he enjoyed hanging out at used bookstores and soaking up the atmosphere. He had attended several colleges all over the country before finishing up at Sonoma State University, where he majored in philosophy and psychology. Not a person terribly into formalities, Carroll never quite got around to filing the official papers for graduation. "I didn't want to teach or write in my major, so I didn't really need the degree," he said.
After working at a used bookstore for three years, Carroll thought he knew enough about the business to open his own store. It turned out he didn't. "I got overconfident," he said. "I did not have enough money or experience to go into the business on my own." After several years of working for someone else, he opened Carroll's Books in 1989 in San Francisco's trendy N Valley and watched it become a popular and respected business. In August 1998 he moved the store to North Beach.
While providing him with sufficient income, the bookstore business has not distracted Carroll from his other interests, such as traveling. He started touring Europe in the 1970s, and has immersed himself in the international book trade, journeying to London to buy used books and ship them back to San Francisco.
In the five or six years before starting the San Francisco Book Co., he averaged one or two Paris visits a year: "I had developed a romantic feeling for Paris."
Wanting to establish some kind of lasting connection with the city, Carroll researched several American book dealers living there. They explained to him how their trade worked in France and what he had to know to become one of them. "I began to think there might be a place for me," he says.
At the time, Paris had (and still has) one new and three used English-language bookstores, plus a number of French-language bookstores that sell books in English. One of the English language stores is called Shakespeare and Co., but has no association with Sylvia Beach's former establishment.
Carroll believed that, in terms of style, inventory and location, his potential business would not conflict with any of the existing English-language bookshops.
Phil Wood, an about-to-retire Bay Area publisher who was planning to resettle in Paris, heard that Carroll wanted to open a bookstore there, and in September 1996 offered to go into partnership with him.
Carroll immediately saw the advantages: Wood not only spoke better French than he did, but could manage the day-to-day operation of the store. Three months later, the two formalized their arrangement and by the spring of 1997 they were in Paris, searching for a suitable location and getting ready to negotiate the formidable French permit process.
"There is no equivalent in the United States to the procedures required in France," said Carroll. "You have to be very meticulous, very precise about procedures." Overcoming the American attitude that faster-is-better is the first step. "The French put up a wall, so you have to develop French patience and accept that their way is the best way."
The French appear to demand that potential business people adhere to high moral standards. Carroll described one particular 15-page form that he had to fill out. On every page, in addition to the regular bureaucratic information required, he had to include a handwritten testament to his honesty, integrity and generally good character.
During the last phase of the process -- several permits, from different administrative jurisdictions, were required -- an official told Carroll and Wood, with that legendary Parisian haughtiness reserved for foreigners, that they simply were not competent enough in French bureaucratese to complete the forms. The official sent them to what Carroll calls a "professional form filler." That person guided them through the paperwork but also dampened their hopes. "She said that even though the forms were filled out perfectly, we would not get the permit." Carroll attributed her negative attitude to a general French pessimism regarding new business ventures.
Discouraged and depressed, the two Americans still submitted their final batch of forms to the Paris authorities. To their utter surprise, they received their final permit within a week-five months since they first started applying.
They had already found a suitable rental space for the San Francisco Book Co. The storefront on rue Monsieur le Prince had been a bookstore and still possessed intact built-in bookcases. Aside from repairing part of a rain-damaged ceiling, Carroll and Wood needed to do very little work to get the place ready. "It had a nice feel to it," Carroll says.
What didn't have a nice feeling was the rent, about the same amount Carroll paid for his San Francisco store, but for only one-fourth the amount of space. The two partners signed a special two-year lease -- the standard French lease is for nine years. The French call the shorter version the précaire, or "the American Lease," indicating a high level of risk associated with a business. Technically, the short-term lease cannot be renewed, but, says Carroll, "There are ways to get around it."
The first order of business for the new owners was to pay sales tax-in advance of anything sold. Carroll paid the equivalent of several hundred dollars in value-added tax, the French national sales tax, based on his inventory of books. He expects eventually to have to pay about 60% of his business income to the government. In the United States, he says, the figure would be closer to 30% or 35%.
Carroll then had to convince a reluctant Wood, who would be running things while he was back in San Francisco, to keep the store open seven days a week. Wood was rapidly acclimatizing to the French way of life, which includes two-hour lunches and Sundays off. French businesses traditionally close on Sundays, although Carroll says that is changing. Supposedly, you need a special permit to stay open on the seventh day, but Carroll hasn't bothered to get one. "I have an American attitude: let them come to me about it," he says.Carroll's final summation to Wood about doing things his way: "After all, we're an American bookstore."
