If you love poking around in Shakespeare & Co. in Paris (does anybody not?), you’ll want to pop into Le Rouge et le Noir on the rue Gaston Follope. Here, however, you will find zero new books and, refreshingly, zero snobisme…

I’ve been wanting to write about this bookshop for some time, but Pascal Didtsch, a founding member of this librairie associative, is hard to pin down. I get the sense that he’s actively involved in at least half the associations in Bernay, of which there are many. He is also, I just learned, a conseiller municipal “Bien vivre à Bernay.” Impressionnant ! I wish I had his energy!

Plus, after nearly nine months here, I’m still getting used to the everything-closes-at-lunch thing, which is just about when I’m ready to venture out on any given day. And then I start work just when things open up again and teach (for my DC client) till after everything’s closed again. Yay.

Le Rouge et le noir opened 22 years ago. There are 30 members of the association and about 15 volunteers, all of whom take turns running the store. Annual dues are “10 or 15 euros.”

I didn’t quite understand the whole nonprofit bookstore concept, so I asked Pascal to explain. He said any money they get from book sales goes towards the rent and utilities. That’s it. They sell books, exchange them, give them away… But they don’t buy them. If the shop is closed and you walk by and see a bunch of books lying around outside, go ahead and take one.

Bookselling is only a small part of the association‘s activity. It also organizes and/or participates in a number of cultural events and gestes all year round:

• Poetry readings during Le printemps des poètes
• Art exhibits
• Lectures
• Musical performances
• Giving away books to anyone in costume on Halloween and Carnival
• Les Nuits de la lecture (an evening stroll around Bernay with literary readings)
• Bouquinistes à bord de l’eau (a pop-up book fair in several towns and villages in the area)
• Book signings by authors (My post on a recent one, where I bought some erotica 🔥 and discovered a pioneer of urban street art in France!)
• And more…

Images: The facade; Pascal (center) chatting with passers-by; The shop window; C’mon in; Stacks ‘n’ shelves; More stacks ‘n’ shelves; The books in English are way the hell up there; So Patrice offered me a leg up; A section on the French Resistance and WWII; Do not not touch; Food for thought; In case, like me, you didn’t know the French translation of “To Kill a Mockingbird”

Regarding Mockingbird: Why “shoot (at)” and not “kill” I wonder? The whole meaning of this quote is lost… I am always confounded by title translations…

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Pascal stressed that the shop is not “political” but, rather, libertaire. (I think it’s best to interpret this in more of a “free-to-be-you-and-me” way, without any connotations the English equivalent might be dragging around with it these days…) He wanted you to know that what they care most about is “friendship among people” and that “all are welcome.”

The shop, if not political, is decidedly engagée. In addition to the usual sections you would expect to find in a bookstore, it also has “feminist” and “Resistance” sections. Several Resistance heroes hailed from Bernay, including Gaston Folloppe, whom the street is named after (more on the heroes, eventually), and the association is a member of L’ANACR (Association Nationale des Anciens Combattants et Ami(e)s de la Résistance).

Le Rouge et le Noir, 22 rue Gaston Folloppe – Tuesday – Saturday, 10:30 to 12:00 & 2:00 to 7:00. Note: all times are –ish. ☮️

On F*cebook: LibrairieLeRougeLeNoir (Sorry, I don’t link to FBK.)