The End for Paris American book shop

For over a century, when The Times' Paris bureau has needed an English-language book in a hurry, someone has walked a couple of hundred yards down the Avenue de l'Opéra to buy it at Brentano's. Sadly, the habit came to an end 10 days ago with the demise of the American bookstore that has been a Paris fixture since 1895.

The old shop at 37 Avenue de L'Opéra, whose customers included Mark Twain, Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, was shut after its landlord, the BNP Parisbas bank, won a liquidation order for non-payment of rent. For some time, the store was locally owned, no longer part of the historic New York-based company which is now a brand in the Borders Group.

Brentano's was a Paris American institution like the Herald Tribune newspaper.  It supplied reading on the old trans-Atlantic steamers and it was appreciated by US expatriates. The Nazi invaders shut down the shop when they arrived in June 1940 and turned it into the film and camera supply centre for the Wehrmacht. At the start of the occupation, a German official walked in and ordered 6,000 books, including 349 assorted titles in Everyman's Library, a variety of art books, the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley's Lover and some expensive erotica (The tale comes from the Brentano's site, which is still open).

During the occupation, the Brentano parent company published French writers such as André Maurois and André Gide and the books were smuggled into France via the Free French forces in north Africa.

Like many other bookshop owners, Chantal and Jean-Marc Bodez, Brentano's last proprietors, could not keep up with soaring inner-city rent. The BNP had raised it from 75,000 euros a year to 200,000.

Independent bookshops have been closing everywhere in the world, but they are better protected in France than most places because the law does not allow price discounting. Brentano's suffered from the lower prices for English-languages books on the big internet chains.

And almost no-one sells books in the prized retail zone between the Louvre and the Opéra. A nearby exception remains WH Smiths', the branch of the UK chain on the rue de Rivoli opposite the Tuileries gardens. Another is Galignani, an historic shop also on the Rue de Rivoli.  And of course there is always Shakespeare & Co on the Left Bank. Here's a list of English-language bookstores in Paris

And it's not just Brentano's who are pulling out of the Opéra quartier. The Times is about to do so too -- after an extraordinary two centuries. We're not closing, just moving, but that's another story to which I shall return. 

Comments

[jason]

oh no! what a shame, now where can i buy my English language books in Paris?
I think BNP have been rather harsh here, surly they could have come to some kind of arrangement?

[Dominique II]

Really sorry to hear that. Brentano's was the place for serious readers. I guess blockbusters could be found as well, but they're everywhere... Where to find Pynchon or Marcuse now?

[Daisy]

What about Galignani also on the rue de Rivoli?

[Bela]

Oh, that's dreadful! I was a frequent customer in the '70s. It had a wonderful atmosphere. I also liked Galignani, but Brentano's was always my first port of call when looking for a specific book.

Looks like the end of independent bookstores everywhere...

[Robert Marchenoir]

I've had enough of being alerted to the demise of Paris historical landmarks by the Times of London, instead of our own domestic media.

First Le Petit Opportun, an old jazz bar next to Le Châtelet, then this.

Does not anyone in French newspapers care about what's happening in their own city ?

On a related topic, would anyone here know about a good English-language library in Paris ?

[J.A. Getzlaff]

What a pity! I have always stopped at Brentano's after visiting my bank (which is not BNP Paribas!).

Thanks for the story,

J.A. Getzlaff, foreignparts.typepad.com

[John]

Charles Bremner wrote: "The Times is about to do so too -- after an extraordinary two centuries. We're not closing, just moving, but that's another story to which I shall return."

Where are you moving to exactly? To the suburbs? That might change you (and your colleagues') perspective on Greater Paris.

[haha, John. It's not impossible. We're looking for premises somewhere much less expensive. CB]

[cricket]

Always sad when a bookshop goes under. But frankly, their selection has been dreadful for quiet some time now. The literature section was an embarrassment, along with most other sections -- excluding thrillers/bestsellers. It was a long, slow decline.
Village Voice and Galignani have always had a far superior selection: thoughtful and hand-picked with an eye to quality.

[tf]

A neat parallel to impending closure of the Librairie de France at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Rent rise cited there as well, though surely Amazon and the like play a role.

There was some expectation that Sarkozy would speak up for the bastion of French culture in the US. Nobody seems to be waiting for Obama to intervene on Brentano's behalf, though.

[Good point. I used to frequent the Rockefeller store when I lived in NY. The Times office was nearby too, on W47th. CB]

[Anne]

oh what a pity.

Here in London, there's an exodus from the centre as well, many shops (especially bookshops) have closed down.

Amazon is doing extremely well, I must say I'm a fan. I like FNAC too.

[Lex Stevens]

I have never understood how the Librairie de France in Rockefeller Center stayed in business. It seems such an odd location for a niche business, unless tourism was the bulk of their trade. It would seem to me that they are a destination, and they could be anywhere in midtown Manhattan, or even lower Manhattan if they were located close to a subway stop.

[Pierre]

As times go by, piece by piece goes the soul of a city: gone with the rent....

[Dominique]

Robert Marchenoir,

"On a related topic, would anyone here know about a good English-language library in Paris ?"

--> I know plenty :

amazon.com
fnac.com
abebooks.co.uk

etc...

same in german and any other language.

[Daisy]

I hate shopping online for books. It is so impersonal. The greatest part of the pleasure is browsing. Every book looks different, feels different, smells different. It's a pity when the smaller bookstores go out of business. They may not offer as many discounts as the big stores but they don't keep pushing the "Oprah" books either.

[Howard Hyde]

My family loves The Red Wheelbarrow. We visit (and buy) whenever we are in Paris. They are extremely accomodating and great with kids, as well has having a superior collection for adults.

[azloon]

This isn't the first time a world-wide financial collapse has affected Brentano's. The company went bankrupt during the Depression, only to be rescued by Stanton Griffis, a wealthy book lover, who along with Arthur Kroch, and later with his son, operated the downsized chain of stores. The son sold it to a media company in 1962.

For the Griffis's, it was labor of love, tho the chain did become modestly profitable for a spell. And this devotion has been the life force of most bookstores going back to Gutenberg. Interestingly, even Brentano's since its early days was kept afloat by its sales of bestsellers, and greeting cards. Revenues from these allowed the less financially viable side of the business -- obscure books by obscure authors, the books we sometimes 'just have to have' -- to exist.

The Chicago branch of Bretano's, where my father and his journalist friends loved to hang out (he took me there occasionally when i was quite young), was taken over by Kroch in 1933, and operated separately as Kroch's and Brentano's. It was famous for its highly erudite sales people who could be counted on to answer the most obscure of questions about literature. The Chicago store was on North Michigan Avenue (Boule Miche -- "Bool Meesh" -- it was called in tribute to it's French pretensions), across the street from the Chicago Tribune.

it is fitting that the 'last hurrah' of this once vibrant institution should be in France, a reader and thinkers's paradise, where the past, at least selectively, is a living thing and guarded carefully. the rest of the world has long since given up on this sort of romantic sentiment, and i guess it's going to take BNP to pound it out of the French.

Imagine Arthur Brentano's reaction had he been told that in his grandchildren's lifetime every word ever written by man (well, ok, a lot of them) would be available with the touch of a typewriter keypad. sometimes it's good not to know what the future holds.

[Dominique II]

As an aside, let's observe that the free market is giving birth (not only in Paris) to endless streets chock full of garment retailers, opticians and bank branches, to the exclusion of convenience shops, bookstores (who needs them, right) and other life-bringing joints.

Could an economist of the Chicago persuasion explain to me how that is to the benefit of everyone, as we are ordered to believe?

[rocket]

Lex

I have never understood how the Librairie de France in Rockefeller Center stayed in business.

It didn't. Next Sept the show is over

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/arts/livres/200906/06/01-863674-le-francais-a-new-york-fin-dun-chapitre.php

"La principale raison? L'augmentation vertigineuse du prix du bail. «Le loyer est énorme ici. On payait déjà 1000$ par jour et là, le nouveau bail va passer à 1 million de dollars par année», précise Emanuel Molho assis dans son bureau exigu du sous-sol."

Bookstores will follow the same route as travel agencies. That's to say bite the dust!

[Pepper]

is this "retaliation" :) for last year's closing of the Librairie Française in NYC?

Sorry "Jason", you'll now have to buy English books via Amazon!

[Rick]

‘Could an economist of the Chicago persuasion explain to me how that is to the benefit of everyone, as we are ordered to believe?’

Well, DOM2, you’re not looking for a bracing argument on a lazy Friday, are you? I’d have thought one can hold economists – Sunni, Shia, United Reformed, Chicagoan, or Latterday Wall Street – responsible for many of the world’s woes. But not the rental value of city centre property... in the Francosphere. Poor Belgo-France, if what you say is true...

As a recent book puts it: ‘Debt is widely perceived as a little sinful. France’s very backward banking system has never really come round to credit’. France’s failing here lies in a combination of rustic fearfulness and financial sophistication (total absence of).

Comparisons are rather odious, but don’t you think your pose is just a bit like the wise virgin’s. No not the one in the Bible...

This virgin is the kind who, having made a thorough risk-assessment of the dangers involved in air-, road-, rail-, and pedestrian-travel, arrives -- with perfectly rational deductive force -- at one inescapable conclusion.

Yes, it would be best to stay in bed. Alone.

[Julio]

My guess is that it will be replaced by a Seattle based franchise selling coffee-flavoured water.
Progress I guess.

[Thomas V]

There's a tiny bookshop on the Left Bank called the Canadian Bookshop (or something that way), in narrow Rue de la Parcheminerie (a lane linking touristic Rue de la Harpe to Rue Saint Jacques), between metro stations Cluny and St Michel.

The owner is a really nice man who'll be happy to give you plenty of advice.
You won't always find a precise reference here, though ; it's more a place to spend time and leaving with a book you had never heard of.

[christopher muir]

In the mid-fifties Brentano's was was always crowded, often with the help of visiting American celebrities staying at ridiculously expensive nearby five star hotels. A humble foreign student could rub shoulders with the rich and catch ab always glimpse of their reading habits. The bookstore's assistants were courteous and well informed. Extensive browsing was allowed. What a pity to see the place go.

[Lex Stevens]

'to endless streets chock full of garment retailers, opticians and bank branches' -- D2

I think that a great deal of it has to do with cheap, Chinese labor. The profit margins on apparel and eye glasses is so enormous, the retailers no longer look at business the way smaller merchants have to.

In my tiny hardware store, if you count every nut, bolt and washer, I have about ten thousand items. These items range in price from five cents to $150. I know that I have to make an average gross profit margin of 'x' and do 'y' amount of business each month to stay in business.

In modern clothiers and optical shops, as I understand it, they look at it in terms of having to sell three dresses or four pairs of eyeglasses each day to turn a profit.

I do not consider a business that can put its entire inventory into two suitcases a real business.

Banks are no longer the grand affairs they once were. Now they are simple offices with a few employees. Given the services that they actually provide in most branches, they could easily be replaced with dump bins on street corners for us to give them our money.

A friend of mine says that we are just old enough (mid forties) to remember when everything wasn't the same.

Shopping has now become a form of family entertainment, apparel has become disposable, and eyeglasses have become a fashion accessory. When I was younger, shopping was a big deal and one only did it when one needed things and one expected to buy things that would last.

It seems that the High street, like Wall Street, has become all about quick profits and not long term investment. The landlords raise the rents, the old businesses are pushed out, and the new age of retailers move in, and out, and in, and out....making it as long as they can and closing up and moving on when they can't. Many of the ones who appear to be boutiques are part of huge multinationals, and have stores all over the world.

John Kenneth Galbraith said that the real problem with monopoly was not the influence it had on pricing, but rather that it limited the amount of goods available in the marketplace. I begin to see his point. In pensée unique I used to see Morton's fork. Now I see Hobson's choice.

[Dominique II]

You see, RICK? I have the audacity to observe that in this case, the market hardly plays its halloweed benevolent part, and ask for a rational reconciliation of this factoid with the religion of the market; what I get instead is a dressing down.

Granted that's your personal style, but rest assured that's perfectly typical of the poseurs who call themselves economists these days. If they dared - and they will - they'd say "ultimately, starving is good for you".

Of course in that case the markets operate through real estate rental prices. Thank you, even in my spinster bedroom I have a TV. But that does not answer my question, does it. You in fact recognized that things were dire in France in Belgium...

oh but stupid me, it's because real estate brokers in thses countries are Socialists.

[Rick]

I was neither bullying you nor making jokes at your expense, DOM2.

[Maurice L.]

Thanks for pointing this out. No more cinemas on the Champs d'Elysées due to the rent bubble (well, a few, but it ain't what it used to was), and now idiots much much worse than Kerviel have extinguished a potentially historic point of intercultural exchange because they figured the rent was undervalued. We'll see how long the next tenant lasts, if and when they find one. Or was the concession simply bought by someone wishing the decline of Paris's ambiance and able to pay the cash?

[Edward Johns]

Maybe this is symptomatic of the demise of the Capital City...everywhere! Why have so many facilities all in one place in this high tech age?

[Nick Moore]

With a rent increase of that magnitude I'm not surprised Brentano's had to close. What is it about big institutional landlords that they feel the need to squeeze every last drop out of their tenants, and in doing so destroy the local ambiance? No doubt the space will be filled by yet another boring financial institution, though we will probably be spared another airline office!

This sort of thing destroyed Regent Street in London in the 70's and 80's, and the Champs more recently.

Having said that, and agreeing that bookshops are lovely places, English language ones tend to be in the centre, take a long time to get to if you live or work in the suburbs, often don't have the title you want, and seem to be very expensive.

I find walking and taking the Metro a physical strain these days, so, I'm afraid, I order on-line from my home PC.

Not as romantic, not supporting local traders etc. I know, but the world changes and time and convenience are at a premium.

Sad but true.

[Marco]

Perhaps The Times and Brentano's could come to an arrangement to share premises? Somewhere perhaps cheaper and further out but still on the Metro line?

[azloon]

[so, I'm afraid, I order on-line from my home PC.

Not as romantic, not supporting local traders etc.] Nick

I confess to using the expertise of experienced journalists and not paying for it, by getting all my news from newspaper websites, usually through Google News. But this can't go on forever. The newspapers who hire and train these folks will soon go out of business and we'll (in the U.S.) be left with the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post. Ugh

News freebies, like Google, infuriate conventional journalists, like my brother who recently took a bankruptcy-related buyout from the Los Angeles Times. But shame on legacy journalism for missing the online trend which might have assured their own survival. One of them could have purchased Google for several hundred million dollars (a pittance) ten years ago.

Further confession: I even go into Barnes and Noble here looking for a book which if i don't find, will, instead, order from Amazon rather than letting B&N do it, as they offer to do.

[dot king]

Always a shame, as has been said, to see a bookshop closing - their charm is often that they didn't change with the times (not The Times), but that can also make them infuriating - I quite often note down a book-title and author, but might not go looking for the book for a while as I always have a pile waiting to be read as people lend me stuff and etc, by which time the shops just look askance at you and say "but that was published six months ago, should've bought it then". So of course you go on Amazon which is a bit of a musical and literary "Alice's Restaurant".

Recently, I half-heartedly sought out three cds of music I only have on vinyl and have never been able to find - even on Amazon - and that day, there they were, all three of them, had them all chez moi within a week.

[Robert Marchenoir]

Thank you Dominique, but I was looking for an English-language library, not bookstore.

[suedoise]

Brentano never had the elegant assortment of the bookshops in rue de Rivoli and those of us living in Paris use amazon.

[LG]

I went there on Thursday and was shocked to find there was a sign up saying it had closed. What a shame.

[Barbara Cattoni]

Try the Paris City lending libraries (Bibliotheques de Paris ) for English language books. Some such as the one in rue Drouot have lots of books in English. And membership is free.

[Dominique II]

Isn't there an US Cultural center in Paris (boulevard Raspail if memory serves)? they normally lend lots of books.

[Tinchy Stryder]

W H Smith, 248 Rue De Rivoli

[A L SEN]

Why should we be so surprised? Rich people prefer to spend money on cars, perfumes and handbags, not books. Metropolitan centres are only for luxury businesses, not for book-readers! It's a physical and economic consequence of the general flight of intellectual and artistic life in modern culture away from the centre stage to the margins. I'm sure a giant DVD and computer games shop would do a lot better in that part of Paris (or any other metropolitan giant) than a bookshop. Brentano's is only going to be the beginning of a trend.

[Robert Marchenoir]

Thank you, Barbara and Dominique II. I'll check those...

Actually, I have a membership card for the network of Paris libraries, but up to now the selection of English books I've found there has been rather limited. That's why I was looking for a more specialised institution.

[Ruth]

Robert Marchenoir (and anyone else looking for an English-language library in Paris):

http://www.americanlibraryinparis.org/

Been around since 1920 and G-d willing will keep going forever!

[paul]

Perhaps a word of thanks to Gibert son and father who keep a good stock of quality English books and NQL. And of course the very glamorous Galignani in the very chic rue de Rivoli.
But of course with Amazon we have a bookstore that is the biggest in the world and an excellent and quick service.
Shame though about Brentano where it was wonderful to look in at lunchtime at the expensive art books.
But apart from Virgin's Megastore where in France can you browse at a table and drink a coffee as in London? French bookstores do remain elitist and secret places. And English books are even more elitist or 'academic'. But speaking as a French provincial, in my local French hypermarket and railway station and my FNAC the latest English and American fiction is available at a very reasonable cost. Honestly the selection is not much worse than in many bookshops around Britain these days.

[Chloe Chase-Nicholson]

Well guys, join the American Library in Paris, it's the best Member ship Library in Europe, in the 7th Arrond. off Avenue Rapp. Wonderful, It was started after 1st W.W for American soldiers, and is privatly funded. I love it and have been a member for 15 years. A great up- to- date selection of books , and in a beautiful setting , you can even order a book , and they will try and get it for you . There is also a monthly or one day member ship, many different deals. Go there if you love books!

[Alberto Lupi]

what we are losing are not the books, as Amazon, Abebooks, Fnac & Co. are to stay in businnes: we are loosing the big intellectual satisfation of browsing, meeting what we don't expect

[Francesca]

Galignani on the rue de Rivoli is not that good for Eng. lang. books. WH Smith is depressing, submerged under heaps of trashy or 2nd rate "literature" (hah!) C'est grave!

Francesca, London/Paris

[Francesca]

Sorry ... may I just add that the Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysées is just about rock bottom for book - I repeat, "the pits", even the staff agree!!
Francesca, again.

[Patrick]

Bit of a shock to learn here of closure of Brentano's. I have spent many pleasant hours browsing there. But the decline had been clear for a long time.

I don't understand the aggressive attitude of BNP. There is serious glut in the commercial property market in Paris which will probably crash next year. It will hit BNP very hard and I for one will have no sympathy.

[Jennifer CS]

For an English-language bookstore, there is also the Village Voice (6 rue Princesse 75006 Paris) It is small, but the staff and owner are always on hand for some good advice and they hold regular author readings