Beat Hotel - Fame With The Beat Generation

Fame With The Beat Generation

The hotel gained fame through the extended 'family' of beat writers and artists who stayed there from the late 1950s to the early 1960s in a ferment of creativity.

Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky first stayed there in 1957 and were soon joined by William S. Burroughs, Derek Raymond, Harold Norse and Gregory Corso, as well as Sinclair Beiles. It was here that Burroughs completed the text of Naked Lunch 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 at the hotel and Corso wrote the mushroom cloud-shaped poem Bomb.

There is now a small hotel (four stars) at that address called the Le Relais du Vieux Paris which contains photographs of several of these personalities and which 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 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.