French Literature Reviews - 2026

B. Miles, Beat Hotel - Ginsberg, Burroughs et Corso in Paris - 1957-1963
Writers: Biography, Letters and Memoirs

B. Miles, Beat Hotel - Ginsberg, Burroughs et Corso in Paris - 1957-1963

Arles: Le Mot et le Reste, 360 p.

• 23.00 €
• EAN13: 9782360540334

Publisher's overview:

In the heart of the Latin Quarter, on rue Gît-le-Cœur in Paris, a run-down hotel played a pivotal role in the history of the Beat generation. It was in this establishment, run with an iron fist by Madame Rachou, that American Beat writers—voluntary exiles from a country too puritanical to embrace their ideas—found refuge.

Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso... all of them stayed there. This modest hotel would become the epicenter of the Beat phenomenon, which—spanning New York, San Francisco, Mexico City, Tangier, Amsterdam, London, and Budapest—impacted not only American writers and artists, but the entire international bohemian scene.
This remarkably well-documented book brilliantly retraces the Parisian years of these major Beat figures. It captures the international dimension of the movement, the strategies that allowed it to spread, and immerses us in the working-class and underworld Paris of that era, with its long-lost spirit and voices.

Barry Miles

A counterculture specialist, Barry Miles—co-founder of *International Times* and the London-based Indica Gallery and Bookstore—met Allen Ginsberg in the 1960s. This marked the beginning of a long-standing professional and personal friendship.
He is the author of several major biographies (including of Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, and Paul McCartney).

The Beat generation emerged in post-war America as a distinct literary and cultural phenomenon characterized by a rejection of conventional academic formalism, a fascination with jazz, and an exploration of altered states of consciousness. Writers associated with the movement sought a radical reinvention of poetic and narrative forms, often drawing inspiration from modernist predecessors, the French avant-garde, and eastern philosophies. Their voluntary exile to European and North American bohemian hubs reflected a broader pattern of artistic displacement in search of expressive freedom and intellectual community away from conservative social mores.

This volume retraces the years spent by key American writers in a modest Parisian establishment on rue Gêt-le-Cœur, examining how this location functioned as a gathering point during a transformative period of their literary trajectories. Barry Miles focuses on the international dimensions of the network, tracing the interpersonal connections and artistic exchanges that linked these figures to broader bohemian currents. Readers interested in the history of mid-century countercultural movements and Anglo-American expatriate networks in Europe may find this work relevant to their pursuits.