When the Beats moved to Paris

In 1956, as the obscenity trial of "Howl" was underway, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso decamped to Paris. American and British artists and associates joined them there, at a cheap, dirty hotel at 9 Route Gît-Le-Coeur in the city's Latin Quarter. The hotel already had a clientele of oddballs and prostitutes, pimps and police, but it became known among a certain set as the Beat Hotel.

That's also the name of a coming documentary by Alan Govenar and Alan Hatchett. Its main window into that time is Englishman Harold Chapman, who left a job waiting tables and hitchhiked to Paris to photograph it. He wound up meeting Ginsberg and Corso, moving into the hotel and, some said, trying to become invisible so he could photograph the people who passed through. But he's not invisible; he's interviewed extensively in the film, and his photographs constitute much of its visual content.

In the trailer, he says Ginsberg had "quite a different style." He continues:

That's one of the things I learned from Allen. That you don't have to worry about the conventions of  composition in photography, or anything, you just invent your own, and so forth. Just do whatever you like.

Chapman's pictures appear in the photo book "The Beat Hotel," published in France in 1984. Copies are available from AbeBooks for $100 to $300. A cheaper version of the story -- if a longer, less pretty read -- is Barry Miles' 2001 history "The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs and Corso in Paris, 1958-1963."

And then there's the coming documentary, which will have the pictures, older men looking back on the period, and, if the trailer is any indication, a really snazzy beat-jazz score.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Comments

[Hugh]

I have to say, although the film sounds like something I'd definitely like, having watched that 6+ mins, I now don't feel any need to actually watch the whole thing. I'd maybe watch it on TV or something, but it seems quite slow for a feature film...?

[dramaman]

Beat Hotel happenings happen in 2 plays by Playwright Larry Myers being presented sept 4 & 5 at Saval Theater on Murray for the HOWL FESTIVAL
"Memo From Allen Ginsberg"
and
"Future Sanskrit" abt Harold Norse (Dr Myers was close friend of recently deceased Norse)
The jack Kerouac Literary Group previewed the "Memo" play in Hamptons

[David Grove]

"I would I had been there."

[karen moller]

I was there. The guy on the right is CY Lester. You can read all about those times in my memoir Techniccolor Dreamin' and Beyond -- the 1960's Rainbow or In Her Own Fashion.
Also the life and times of the beats and hippies in London