From the bestselling author of "Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats" and "Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now" comes the story of the infamous Beat Hotel. Based on diaries, letters, and many original interviews, "The Beat Hotel" is an intimate look at some of the 20th century's most enduring and daring writers.
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From the bestselling author of "Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats" and "Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now" comes the story of the infamous Beat Hotel. Based on diaries, letters, and many original interviews, "The Beat Hotel" is an intimate look at some of the 20th century's most enduring and daring writers.
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Barry Miles' book, "The Beat Hotel" explores the American beat movement during a time in which most of its major representatives, (with the exception of Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder) were in Paris at a cheap, nameless hotel located at Rue Git-Le-Coeur, and managed by one Madame Rachon. The hotel was cheap and unsanitary. As long as the guests paid their bills, Madame Rachon allowed them a broad range of freedom in their eccentric lifestyles. The beat hotel was home to the beats as well as to various artists, models, and other bohemians before it closed in 1963.
The book includes convincing biographical portrayals of Allen Ginsberg, his lover Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin (whose name was unfamiliar to me), and others who stayed at the beat hotel. Miles gives detailed documentation on the activities of each during their stay in the beat hotel while reflecting upon why each of these individuals is worth knowing about.
I found the discussion of the day-to-day life in the hotel the most rewarding part of the book together with a discussion of the relationships of the beats, and other guests, to Olympia Press. The Olympia Press published works by many of the Beats together with many works of pornography at that time available only with difficulty in the United States.
The book invites reflection on the nature of the beat movement and of the broader movement of bohemianism as it developed earlier in the 19th Century. What were the beats looking for? They were full of unconventional, shocking behavior, particularly in the abuse of drugs and sex as these are documented graphically in the book. They were also serious, had a dedication to literature, a willingness to explore and to come to terms with themselves, a desire for change. The beats were perhaps the most cohesive literary movement 20th Century America has produced and in some cases produced works of merit. Miles's discussion of the work and achievement of these writers encourages one to want to know more.
Miles ties the beats in to later developments in pop culture in the 1960s: rock and roll, psychedelics, open sexuality. This to me is claiming too little and too much. It trivializes this movement, I think, to watch the commercialization that took place during the 1960. The beats were isolated, troubled, and searching individuals who, in their productive days, neither had nor wanted the glare of the media. What they did was for themselves and what we make of them is a matter for reflection and not for subsequent 1960s hype.
I read Miles biography of Kerouac and was moved by it to read this book. I wasn't disappointed. He is a thoughtful writer on a significant American literary movement.
