The Beat Hotel:
Ginsberg,
Burroughs, and Corso in Paris
By Jesse Monteagudo
The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs,
and Corso in Paris 1957-1963, by Barry Miles; Grove Press; 294
pages; $25.00.
 When is a flophouse not a
flophouse? When it is inhabited by poor but talented artists who later
become famous. Such is the case of the rooming house that was once located
at 9 rue Git-le-Coeur on Paris's Left Bank. Now "one of those legendary
addresses . . . of international bohemia", this "Beat Hotel" was at
various times between 1957 and 1963 the home of William Burroughs, Gregory
Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Harold Norse, Peter Orlovsky, Ian
Sommerville and other stars of the "Beat Generation".
It was here that Gysin invented the "cut-up" method of
writing that was later used by Burroughs in The Soft Machine
and The Ticket That Exploded. It was here that Ginsberg
immortalized his mother Naomi in his epic poem "Kaddish"; and it was here
that Corso wrote some of his most explosive poems. Indeed, the "only major
Beat figure not to set foot in the rue Git-le-Coeur" - contrary to popular
myth - was Jack Kerouac.
By the time Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs died in 1997, the
once-shocking Beat writers had become part of America's literary canon.
Surviving members of the Beat Generation make a living playing to a
generation of fans who was not even born when its heroes inhabited the
Beat Hotel. There's even a Hotel Bohème, in San Francisco's North Beach,
where yuppies can now play at being bohemians.
Last year I attended a Beat Generation symposium, at the Miami Book
Fair International, which featured Beat writers Diane Di Prima and Michael
McClure, along with Beat scholar Ann Charters and the editor of Philip
Whalen's papers.
Though the panelists delighted the mostly-young audience with their
readings and reminiscences, I found the whole thing boring and a bit
disappointing. The Beat authors, who once stood for all that was daring
and radical and subversive in American life, had become respectable! I
left in the middle of the program.
| Though
the Beat writers are not what they used to be, I still enjoy reading
about their golden years, when they were the epitome of sex, drugs
and be-bop jazz. In fact, I must confess that the lives of
Burroughs, Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac are often more interesting than
their writings.
Barry Miles knows this, which is why he's made a career out
of chronicling the lives of the Beat authors. The Beat
Hotel is Miles's fourth book about the Beats, following his
biographies of Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac. Though The
Beat Hotel only deals with the Hotel's golden years, it goes
beyond Miles's previous books by encompassing all the Beats who
lived beneath its tattered roof. |
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She
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Related
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The Beat Page
GayToday does not endorse
related sites. |
Indeed, Miles is most interesting and
revealing when he writes about the "minor" writers who lived at the Hotel,
especially Corso, Gysin and Sommerville. On the other hand, Miles's slight
treatment of Harold Norse--a major poet whose work transcended the Beat
Generation - is disappointing.
It was Norse, after all, who wrote the book--also titled "Beat
Hotel" - that made 9 rue Git-le-Coeur as famous a Paris landmark as the
Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame.
In The Beat Hotel, Miles captures the inhabitants of
the Beat Hotel at their creative highs and personal lows. Living under the
watchful eye of Madame Rachou - the no-nonsense widow who managed the
Hotel - these starving artists tried to create immortal art at a time when
they didn't know where their next dollar or franc would come from.
This did not keep the resident Beats from enjoying each other's
company; all types of gay, bi or hetero-sex; and a cornucopia of legal or
illegal drugs. Though Corso (who is still alive) is straight, most of his
colleagues were gay or bisexual. Indeed, it was French society's tolerance
of unconventional sexuality that drew many Beat writers to the rue
Git-le-Coeur.
Almost three decades after the Beat Hotel closed for good, 9 rue
Git-le-Coeur is occupied by the plush Relais Hôtel du Vieux Paris, a far
cry from the "decrepit rooming house with hole-in-the-floor toilets shared
by all the residents" which nonetheless tries to make hay out of its
historic connotation.
Yet it was the Beat Hotel and not its successor that made their
shared locale a cultural icon. Though I wouldn't want to live there, I
would have loved to visit the Beat Hotel, just to meet Burroughs,
Ginsberg, Norse and Company in their heyday. Reading The Beat
Hotel by Barry Miles is the next best thing to actually being
there.
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