Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs and Corso in Paris, 1957-1963 » (Reprint)

The Beat Hotel is a delightful chronicle of a remarkable moment in American literary history. From the Howl obscenity trial to the invention of the cut-up technique, Barry Miles's extraordinary narrative chronicles the feast of ideas that was Paris, where the Beats took awestruck audiences with Duchamp and Celine, and where some of their most important work came to fruition--Ginsberg's "Kaddish" and "To Aunt Rose"; Corso's The Happy Birthday of Death; and Burroughs's Naked Lunch. Based on firsthand accounts from diaries, letters, and many original interviews, The Beat Hotel is an intimate look at an era of spirit, dreams, and genius.

Library Journal

The cheap rooming house at nine rue Git-Le-Coeur became known as the Beat Hotel after several Beat writers made it their home in Paris. In this interesting blend of sexual gossip and literary scholarship, Miles, author of full-length biographies of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac, paints a vivid picture of literary life along the Left Bank in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He recounts not only the Beat writers' creative interactions with one other but their relations with such Frenchmen as Maurice Girodias, publisher of the Olympia Press, and Henri Michaux, an author who shared their fascination with the use of drugs to heighten consciousness. Miles also documents the influences of a number of European writers on the Beats, including Andr Breton, Louis-Ferdinand C line, and Sergei Esenin. Finally, he is particularly good at exploring the collaboration between Brion Gysin and Burroughs that led to their famous cut-up method. This is fun reading, especially for those steeped in the Beats. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/00.]--William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\