The Beat Hotel:
Ginsberg, Burroughs & Corso in Paris, 1957-1963
By Barry Miles
Grove Press, $25
ISBN 080211668X

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The artists and writers of the American cultural and literary movement known as the Beat Generation are popularly credited in the U.S. for having laid the groundwork for the explosion of personal freedom and expression that culminated in the 1960s. While the movement had a worldwide impact, most of the Beat artists' works had a distinctly American flavor.

However, like many eccentric American exiles and expatriate artists of the early 20th century Modernist Movement, a handful of the Beat's luminaries -- Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and company -- made their homes in a small dive on the Left Bank in Paris. From 1957-1963 (when the hotel was sold), the Beat Hotel, as it became known, served as an economical crash pad for these Beat artists and many other assorted international bohemians who filtered through Paris between maniacal exploits. They lingered in the same museums, cafes, and bistros, and were inspired by the same lively street life that had influenced Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, and the like earlier in the century. It is where Burroughs finally finished writing Naked Lunch, where Ginsberg began what many call his greatest poem, "Kaddish," and where Corso wrote The Happy Birthday of Death.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. Kerouac's On the Road was just being embraced by readers hungry to experience the hipster world of the Beats.

Citing letters, journals, interviews, and personal friendships, author Barry Miles, who has written biographies of Beat notables Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, as well as Beatle Paul McCartney, revisits the period when the Beat Hotel (now demolished and home to the upscale Relais-Hotel du Vieux Paris) served as the European headquarters for Beat mischief and kicks. Miles exposes this previously overlooked existence of the Beat artists with accounts of their correspondence and far out experiences with their European contemporaries. The Beat Hotel fills a biographical hole in Beat history by recounting how three American artists went to Paris, added six years worth of important works to an American literary movement, and came home to a changing nation.

Jamie McAlister's beat is the coast of South Carolina.