The Beat Hotel was a small, run-down hotel of 42 rooms at 9

Rue Gît-le-Cœur Rue Gît-le-Cœur is a street in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France. Name In the 14th century the street was documented under the name ''Gilles-Queux'' or ''Gui-le-Queux'', presumably referring to a cook ( in Old French) named Giles. Late ...

in the

Latin Quarter The Latin Quarter of Paris (french: Quartier latin, ) is an area in the 5th and the 6th arrondissements of Paris. It is situated on the left bank of the Seine, around the Sorbonne. Known for its student life, lively atmosphere, and bistro ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, notable chiefly as a residence for members of the Beat poetry movement of the mid-20th century.

Overview

It was a "class 13" hotel, meaning bottom line, a place that was required by law to meet only minimum health and safety standards. It never had any proper name – "the Beat Hotel" was a nickname given it by

Gregory Corso Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet and a key member of the Beat movement. He was the youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burrou ...

, which stuck. The rooms had windows facing the interior stairwell and not much light. Hot water was available Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The hotel offered the opportunity for a bath – in the only bathtub, situated on the ground floor – provided the guest reserved time beforehand and paid the surcharge for hot water. Curtains and bedspreads were changed and washed every spring. The linen was (in principle) changed every month. The Beat Hotel was managed by a married couple, Monsieur and Madame Rachou, from 1933. After the death of Monsieur Rachou in a traffic accident in 1957, Madame was the sole manager until the early months of 1963, when the hotel was closed. Besides letting rooms, the establishment had a small bistro on the ground floor. Due to early experiences with working at an inn frequented by

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

and

Camille Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...

, Madame Rachou would encourage artists and writers to stay at the hotel and even at times permit them to pay the rent with paintings or manuscripts. One unusual thing that appealed to a clientele of bohemian artists was the permission to paint and decorate the rooms rented in whichever way they wanted.

Fame with the Beat Generation

The hotel gained fame through the extended "family" of

beat Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery (c ...

writers and artists who stayed there from the late 1950s to the early 1960s in a ferment of creativity.

was introduced to the hotel by painter and resident

Guy Harloff Guy or GUY may refer to: Personal names * Guy (given name) * Guy (surname) * That Guy (...), the New Zealand street performer Leigh Hart Places * Guy, Alberta, a Canadian hamlet * Guy, Arkansas, US, a city * Guy, Indiana, US, an unincorp ...

in 1957. In September of that year, Corso would be joined by

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

and

Peter Orlovsky Peter Anton Orlovsky (July 8, 1933 – May 30, 2010) was an American poet and actor. He was the long-time partner of Allen Ginsberg. Early life and career Orlovsky was born in the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of Katherine (née ...

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

Derek Raymond Robert William Arthur Cook (12 June 1931 – 30 July 1994), better known since the 1980s by his pen name Derek Raymond, was an English crime writer, credited with being a founder of British '' noir''. Biography Early life The eldest son of a t ...

, and

Harold Norse Harold Norse (July 6, 1916, New York City – June 8, 2009, San Francisco) was an American writer who created a body of work using the American idiom of everyday language and images. One of the expatriate artists of the Beat generation, Norse w ...

, as well as

Sinclair Beiles Sinclair Beiles (b. Kampala, Uganda, 1930 - 2000, Johannesburg) was a South African beat poet and editor for Maurice Girodias at the Olympia Press in Paris. He developed along with William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin the cut-up technique of wr ...

would follow. It was here that Burroughs completed the text of ''

Naked Lunch ''Naked Lunch'' (sometimes ''The Naked Lunch'') is a 1959 novel by American writer William S. Burroughs. The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes, intended by Burroughs to be read in any order. The reader follows the na ...

'' and began his lifelong collaboration with Brion Gysin. It was also where Ian Sommerville became Burroughs' "systems advisor" and lover. Gysin introduced Burroughs to the cut-up technique and with Sommerville they experimented with a "dream machine" and audio tape cut-ups. Here Norse wrote a novel ''Beat Hotel'' using cut-up techniques. Ginsberg wrote a part of his moving and mature poem ''

Kaddish Kaddish or Qaddish or Qadish ( arc, קדיש "holy") is a hymn praising God that is recited during Jewish prayer services. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God's name. In the liturgy, different version ...

'' at the hotel, and Corso wrote the

mushroom cloud A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud of debris, smoke and usually condensed water vapor resulting from a large explosion. The effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, but any sufficiently ener ...

-shaped poem ''Bomb''. There is now a small hotel, the four-star Relais du Vieux Paris, at that address. It displays photographs of several Beat personalities and describes itself as "The Beat Hotel". In July 2009, as part of a major William Burroughs symposium NakedLunch@50, a special tribute was held outside 9 Rue Gît-le-Coeur, with

Jean-Jacques Lebel Jean-Jacques Lebel (born in Paris on June 30, 1936) is a French artist. His father was also a poet, translator, poetry publisher, political activist, art collector, and art historian. Besides his heterogeneous artworks and poetry, Lebel is also k ...

unveiling a ''plaque commemorative'', now permanently hammered to the outside wall next to the main entrance, honoring the Beat Hotel's seven most famous occupants: B. Gysin, H. Norse, G. Corso, A. Ginsberg, P. Orlovsky, I. Sommerville, W. Burroughs.

Bibliography

* ''The Beat Hotel'', by Harold Chapman, gris banal, éditeur (1984) * ''The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1957-1963'', by Barry Miles (2001) (
Excerpts
* ''Beat Hotel'', by

, Published by Atticus Press, 1983. . * ''The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944-1960'', by Steven Watson. Published by Pantheon Books, 1995. .

References

External links

Documentary about The Beat Hotel

by '' Harold Chapman''
Beat Hotel Reconstruction at "Sinclair Beiles and the Beat Hotel" Exhibition, 24 January 1997

Inside the Beat Hotel of Paris

The Road to the Beat Hotel
Video clip.

Eddie Woods Eddie Woods is an American poet, prose writer, editor and publisher who lived and traveled in various parts of the world, both East and West, before eventually settling in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where in 1978 he started ''Ins & Outs'' magazin ...

and others in a special Beat Hotel tribute on the Rue Gît-le-Coeur, Paris (July 2009).

A comedy puppet show inspired by the original hotel {{coord, 48, 51, 13.85, N, 2, 20, 33.91, E, region:FR-75_type:landmark_source:dewiki, display=title Beat Generation Hotels in Paris Defunct hotels in France Hotel buildings completed in 1933 Latin Quarter, Paris 1933 establishments in France 1963 disestablishments in France Hotels established in 1933 Hotels disestablished in 1963