George Whitman R.I.P
Burning head (haircut) – tête de feu (coupe de cheveux)
Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man (the whole film)
NYtimes obit – Cultural Beacon Dead at 98.
George Whitman (wiki) <> <> Shakespeare & Companay
Sylvia Beach (previous post)
I haven’t seen the film but in the 1960s I hung around Whitman’s bookstore and got to know him; it was there that I met Steve Stollman, Bernard’s brother – that eventually got me a record contract with ESP-Disk. I really liked George; I didn’t know he was still alive, he was old then and seemed always old. I also met Joel Zabor there, now Rafi Zabor; he played drums with me, we played here and there in Paris and Copenhagen; as Rafi Zabor he won the Pen Faulkner award for The Bear Comes Home. After that he pretty much stopped speaking to me! That was a few years ago now. So a lot happened re: George – I also remember listening to Langston Hughes through the bookstore skylight, we were on the roof and I almost fell through and on him. There was a wishing-well in the center of the place. It was amazing.