The Beat Hotel (Day 53 and a half)

Since I’ve been working so hard on the Ginsberg chapter (my model chapter) it was a real pleasure to go find the Beat Hotel while I was in Paris visiting Arte and my old friend Marcelino Truong (whose current book, Une Si Jolie Petite Guerre, is named after Joan Littlewood’s Oh What a Lovely War). The hotel, where Ginsberg stayed and nearly picked up a drug habit thanks to Burroughs and Corso, is a literal stone’s throw from the Seine by Notre Dame and two blocks from Shakespeare & Co. whose owner, Sylvia Beech, is still on my radar (though a long shot) as a potential case study.

I saw the best minds of my generation run out of space

Ginsberg in the Beat Hotel in the Beat Hotel

A soft rain starts a-fallin’ (Day 46)

Another cozy rainy day indoors. Slow start before pushing on with Ginsberg chapter, weaving research notes into the draft. Interspersed this with ploughing through the Hettie Jones book so I’ve it finished before the interview tomorrow evening. Plugged into the rainy mood with some Van and Trane (Born to Sing and Crescent) which played on into Asa’s eponymous debut.

Allen, Bob & Michael McClure

Concluded the day, after latest gathering of the Book Group, with research and thinking for a small business venture I’m kicking off tomorrow with a writer friend and a designer friend from MindGym days, an idea centred on Creative Thinking and which spun out of research I was doing for the Music chapter of the book.

Bob and Allen at Jack Kerouac’s grave