The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs & Corso in Paris, 1957-1963

The Beat Hotel was home to a host of key figures of the Beat generation in the late 1950s and 60s. It was also an unbridled hive of creativity, literary experimentation and drug-crazed extremity. During this period, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" went on trial for obscenity, William Burroughs was inspired to finish "Naked Lunch", the cut-up novel was born, Ginsberg and Corso collided with Duchamp, Celine and Man Ray, and Burroughs was nearly arrested for dealing heroin. Barry Miles, who knew many of the Beats, draws his material from diaries, letters and original interviews. This is an account of a defining time and place for some of the 20th century's most daring and notorious authors.