Help Shakespeare & Co, Get a Drawing of You

It is not good to have a favorite bookstore when it’s your job to love all bookstores. But… Shakespeare & Co in Paris is a fairy tale of a bookstore, the Platonic ideal of a bookstore — a wildly eccentric and gorgeously crowded and utterly trend-resistant place that must be preserved.

They put out this sobering plea a few days ago. Their sales are down 80 percent due to the pandemic.

So here’s my offer: Send us a receipt proving you bought $500 worth of merchandise from the store, and send a photo of yourself (or the person of your choosing). I will do my best to render your face/this face for posterity, in ink or acrylic. You will likely get many versions of yourself, because I will screw up and try again. I’ll send you all my attempts in a sturdy cardboard envelope.

Offer lasts for the next two weeks — let’s say till November 15.

Email your receipts/photos here.