"Jeremy Mercer's tale of George Whitman and his beloved bookstore is a book of revelations, for it tells the hard-to-discover true story of George's life and of the twenty-thousand-and-one nights of this enchanted place that continues to be, for its habitées as well as for its creator, a way of life." –Lawrence Ferlinghetti, cofounder and owner, City Lights Bookstore
"The memoir is much more than an entertaining romp through Parisian literary bohemia at the turn of the millennium.
Time Was Soft There will likely be the last firsthand account of an aging legend." –
Newsweek "Mercer has fashioned a colorful de facto biography of Whitman . . . a tightly written, insightful memoir of Left Bank literary radicalism. A great read, both funny and quietly moving." –
San Francisco Chronicle "The milieu he evokes, while a long way from that of the Lost Generation, has its own charm." –
The Wall Street Journal "The memoir ably captures a romanticized version of the bum's life." –
The New Yorker "Mercer is a fine writer with a keen and jaundiced eye." –
Chicago Tribune