Around the same time that Jack Kerouac packed his rucksack and went on the road, Christopher Makos was born into a Greek American family in Kerouac’s hometown. In the June 2013 issue of That’s,Ned Kelly reported:
Christopher Makos was born in 1948 in Lowell, Massachusetts, the birthplace of pioneering Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac; a heritage he was oblivious of in his youth. “Growing up in Lowell, I wasn’t aware of anything, except how to leave,” he says. “How to grow up fast and figure out how to leave.”
Sounds pretty Beat to me!
Makos went on to live in California and then, after high school, moved to New York and, later, Paris. It was there that he became an apprentice to the esteemed Man Ray. Back in New York City, he photographed the scene on the Lower East Side—Beat writer William S. Burroughs, the Ramones, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Debbie Harry are just a few of the icons who ended up in his book White Trash. Though it was the ’70s by this point, it’s got it’s Beat Generation connections. (If you’re interested in reading up more on this, I’d recommend Victor Bockris’ Beat Punks.)
Makos became friends with Andy Warhol, who called him the “most modern photographer in America.”
The latest incarnation of this seminal punk photography book, White Trash Uncut, is coming out in May 2014 (published by Glitterati Incorporated), and Resource Magazine’s Aria Isberto caught up with the Greek-American photographer to talk about the underground scene, what it takes to get published, and what kind of camera he uses. You can read it here.
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By 1939, he had become so obsessed with a man that he severed his own finger — the last joint of his left little finger, to be exact
In 1942, Burroughs enlisted in the US Army
When he became depressed that he was listed as 1-A Infantry instead of officer, his mother called a family friend, a neurologist, to get him a civilian disability discharge due to mental instability
It took five months for him to be discharged, and he waited at Jefferson Barracks, near his family home
Afterward, he moved to Chicago
In Chicago, the Harvard grad became an exterminator
The Burroughs family was friends with another prominent family, the Carrs
William S. Burroughs II was eleven years old when Lucien Carr was born
During primary school in St. Louis, Burroughs had met David Kammerer, who was three years older than him
Kammerer had been Carr’s youth group leader and become obsessed with him, following him to the University of Chicago
When Carr fled to Columbia University in New York City, Kammerer followed — as did Burroughs, who moved a block away from Kammerer in the West Village
Carr met Allen Ginsberg at Columbia and introduced him to Burroughs and Carr
Burroughs met Joan Vollmer Adams around this time, and he moved in with her
In the summer of ’44, Carr killed Kammerer with his Boy Scout knife, and then went to Burroughs — Kammerer’s friend — for help
Burroughs flushed Kammerer’s bloody pack of cigarettes down the toilet and told Carr to get a lawyer and turn himself in, but instead Carr sought out help from Jack Kerouac
Burroughs and Kerouac were arrested as material witnesses, but Burroughs’ father posted bail for him (Kerouac married Edie Parker to get bail money)
Burroughs became involved in drugs around this time, becoming addicted to heroin
When Burroughs got arrested for forging a prescription, he was released to his parents in St. Louis
When he was finally allowed to leave, he went back to New York City for Joan Vollmer Adams, and together, with her daughter, moved to Texas
It was Joan who gave birth to William S. Burroughs III in 1947
After Texas, the family moved to New Orleans
Around this time, Burroughs was arrested after police found letters at Ginsberg’s place that incriminated him
Burroughs, Joan, and the kids went on the lam to Mexico
In Mexico, Burroughs decided to go back to school: he studied Spanish and the Mayan language at Mexico City College
He studied under R. H. Barlow, a homosexual from Kansas City who commit suicide through overdose in January 1951
He also decided to take up a game of William Tell. It didn’t go so well: he shot Joan in the head, killing her
He only spent 13 days in jail, after his brother bribed authorities to let him out while he waited for trial; witnesses were also bribed so Burroughs would appear innocent. Either way, Burroughs skipped town
Burroughs considers his killing of Joan to be the beginning of his life as a writer; he wrote Queer at this time
Queer was not published until 1985; Burroughs’ first book was actually Junkie, published in 1953 — four years before Kerouac’s On the Road came out
Burroughs III went to live with his grandparents in St. Louis; Joan’s daughter, Julie, went to live with her maternal grandmother
Burroughs himself went down to South America in search of the drug yage
From there, he moved to Palm Beach, Florida, with his parents
His parents paid for him to travel to Rome to see Alan Ansen
They didn’t hit it off romantically, so Burroughs left for Tangier, Morocco
When Kerouac visited Burroughs in Tangier in 1957, he typed up his manuscript for him and edited it into Naked Lunch
In 1959, Burroughs moved to the Beat Hotel in Paris; Ginsberg, Ginsberg’s lover poet Peter Orlovsky, poet Gregory Corso, and photographer Harold Chapman lived there
There, he discovered the cut-up technique of Brion Gysin, which greatly influenced his work
In 1966, Burroughs went to London to seek treatment for his drug addiction and worked there for about six years
Student editor Irving Rosenthal, of Chicago Review, lost his job for publishing excerpts of Naked Lunch and founded his own lit mag, Big Table, where he continued to publish Burroughs’ work. The United States Postmaster General found the work so obscene that he ruled it couldn’t be sent through the mail. This intrigued Maurice Girodias, publisher of Olympia Press
A 1966 case against Naked Lunch remains the United States’ last obscenity trial against literature
Back in the US, Burroughs’ own son had gotten involved in drugs and gotten arrested on prescription fraud (just like dear old dad); Burroughs took him to the Lexington Narcotics Farm and Prison
Burroughs covered the 1968 Democratic National Convention for Esquire magazine; he refused to alter his style to fit Playboy‘s literary demands for another article
Burroughs hated teaching because it expended all his energy and he felt like he got nothing back in return
Bookseller James Grauerholz initiated Burroughs’ reading tour, which helped Burroughs remain in the public eye … and make money for it
In 1976, Burroughs’ son had liver cirrhosis and underwent transplant surgery; Burroughs stayed with him in 76 and 77 to help care for him
Burroughs III cut off his father, writing an article in Esquire that said his father had ruined his life, and died in 1981
In 1978, the Nova Convention took place — a multi-venue retrospective of Burroughs’ work that included readings and discussions by Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, and Timothy Leary in addition to concerts featuring The B-52s, Debbie Harry, and Philip Glass
A couple of years ago, I was ravaging the shelves at the New York Public Library, when I came across Barry Miles’ The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs and Corso in Paris, 1957-1963. It was around Memorial Day, and I remember sitting by the fountain in the East Harlem section of Central Park, marveling at the ingenious writing methods of my favorite writers and their fascinating lives. While Burroughs was making his cut-ups and Ginsberg was writing poetry at night and typing them up in the morning, Corso was off wooing girls into buying him dinner.
Called “a vivid picture of literary life along the Left Bank in the late 1950s and early 1960s … [and] fun reading” by Library Journal, The Beat Hotel is a delightful history of a remarkable moment in American literary history. From the Howl obscenity trial to the invention of the Cut-up technique, Barry Miles’s extraordinary narrative chronicles the feast of ideas that was Paris, where the Beats took awestruck audiences with Duchamp and Celine, and where some of their most important work came to fruition — Ginsberg’s “Kaddish” and “To Aunt Rose”; Corso’s The Happy Birthday of Death; and Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. Based on firsthand accounts from diaries, letters, and many original interviews, The Beat Hotel is an intimate look at a place that “gave the spirit of Dean Moriarty and the genius of Genet and Duchamp a place to dream together of new worlds over a glass of vin ordinaire” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Wikipedia gives a little background on the Beat Hotel:
The Beat Hotel was a small, run-down hotel of 42 rooms at 9 Rue Gît-le-Cœur in the Latin Quarter of Paris, notable chiefly as a residence for members of the Beat poetry movement of the mid-20th century.
It was a “class 13” hotel, meaning bottom line, a place that was required by law to meet only minimum health and safety standards. It never had any proper name – “the Beat Hotel” was a nickname given by Gregory Corso, which stuck on [2][3]. The rooms had windows facing the interior stairwell and not much light. Hot water was available Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The hotel offered the opportunity for a bath – in the only bathtub, situated on the ground floor – provided the guest reserved time in beforehand and paid the surcharge for hot water. Curtains and bedspreads were changed and washed every spring. The linen was (sometimes and in principle) changed every month.
The Beat Hotel was managed by a married couple, Monsieur and Madame Rachou, from 1933. After the death of Monsieur Rachou in a traffic accident in 1957, Madame was the sole manager until the early months of 1963, when the hotel was closed. Besides letting rooms, the establishment had a small bistro on the ground floor. Due to early experiences with working at an inn frequented by Monet and Pissarro, Madame Rachou would encourage artists and writers to stay at the hotel and even at times permit them to pay the rent with paintings or manuscripts. One unusual thing that appealed to a clientele of bohemian artists was the permission to paint and decorate the rooms rented in whichever way they wanted.
The Chelsea Hotel is kind of like New York’s answer to Paris’ Beat Hotel. Patti Smith brings the Chelsea Hotel to life in Just Kids, where she also talks about meeting Burroughs, Corso, and Ginsberg and about the idea of improvising in writing. But I digress….
If you follow me on Twitter, you may remember my recent post lamenting Barney Rosset’s death. Rosset didn’t shy away from experimental work, publishing the revolutionary works of the Beats at Grove Press. Upon his death, Regina Weinreich wrote an article about his involvement with the Beat Hotel.
Alan Govenar is directing a new 82-minute documentary, with First Run Features and produced by Documentary Arts, called The Beat Hotel. Here’s the press release:
1957. The Latin Quarter, Paris. A cheap no-name hotel at 9 rue Git le Coeur became a haven for a new breed of artists fleeing the conformity and censorship of America. The hotel soon turned into an epicenter of Beat writing that produced some of the most important works of the Beat generation. It came to be known as the Beat Hotel. Opening March 30 in New York City, to be followed by a rollout to other cities across the country, Alan Govenar’s feature documentary THE BEAT HOTEL explores this amazing place and time.
Fleeing the obscenity trials surrounding the publication of his seminal poem Howl, Allen Ginsberg, along with Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, happened upon the hotel on rue Git le Coeur and were soon joined by William Burroughs, Ian Somerville, and Brion Gysin. Run by the indefatigable Madame Rachou, the Beat Hotel was a hotbed of creativity and permissiveness, where Burroughs and Gysin developed the cut-up writing method; Burroughs finished his controversial book Naked Lunch; Ginsberg began his poem Kaddish; Somerville and Gysin invented the Dream Machine; Corso wrote some of his greatest poems; and Harold Norse, in his own cut-up experiments, wrote a novella, aptly called The Beat Hotel.
British photographer Harold Chapman‘s iconic photos and Scottish artist Elliot Rudie‘s animated drawings capturing Ginsberg, Orlovsky, Corso, Burroughs, Gysin, Somerville and Norse just as they were beginning to establish themselves on the international scene bring THE BEAT HOTEL to life on the screen. The memories of Chapman and Rudie interweave with the first-hand accounts of French artist Jean-Jacques Lebel, British book dealer Cyclops Lester, and 95 year old George Whitman. Together with the insights of authors Barry Miles, Oliver Harris, Regina Weinreich, and Eddie Woods, among others, they evoke a time and place where Chapman, mentored by Cartier-Bresson, roamed around Paris photographing nuns, bums, and the idiosyncrasies of street life; Corso took scissors to Marcel Duchamp’s tie in a Dadaist statement while Ginsberg kissed his knees; and Burroughs, with the help of Somerville’s lighting, learned to disappear before an audience’s eyes.
Director Alan Govenar is a writer, folklorist, photographer, and filmmaker. He is president of Documentary Arts and has a Ph.D. in Arts and Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. He is the author of 23 books, including Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper’s Daughter, which won first place in the New York Book Festival (Children’s Non-Fiction), among other prizes. The off-Broadway premiere of his musical “Blind Lemon Blues,” co-created with Akin Babatunde, received rave reviews in The New York Times and Variety. Govenar’s film Stoney Knows How, based on his book by the same title about Old School tattoo artist Leonard St. Clair, was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and was selected as an Outstanding Film of the Year by the London Film Festival. Govenar also has produced and directed numerous films in association with NOVA, La Sept/ARTE, and PBS for broadcast and educational distribution, including The Voyage of Doom, Le Naufrage de la Belle, The Devil’s Swing, Texas Style, Everything But the Squeak, The Human Volcano, The Hard Ride, Dreams of Conquest, and Little Willie Eason and His Talking Gospel Guitar.
Judging from the trailer, The Beat Hotel looks like it will be a documentary not to be missed by any fans of the Beats.
I had the great privilege of hearing Patti Smith read from Just Kids at The New School a while back. She read from the priceless scene in which she meets Allen Ginsberg at an automat. I’m quite fond of kitsch automat culture, and used to frequent the one down on Saint Marks when it was still around. Basically, an automat is fast fast food: you don’t even have to stand in line to order a burger and fries; you just slip a few quarters into a vending machine and out comes surprisingly delicious warm food. Whenever I ate at the Automat, I felt like I was a character straight out of The Jetsons. I was hooked on their mac-and-cheese egg rolls. The resurgence of The Automat only stuck around for a few years, but as a whole they were big a few decades ago. When Patti Smith was in her early twenties, scraping by to survive, she fed a few quarters into an automat to get some quick, cheap food. When she turned the knob she discovered the price had gone up. The machine had sucked up her meager coins and she was about to go hungry when Allen Ginsberg offered her the additional cents and even paid for a cup of coffee. They get to talking, she knowing perfectly well he is the great poet, and he thinking the whole time she is a handsome boy!
I knew for a long time that I wanted to read Just Kids. It had all the makings of a book I knew I’d love—New York City, Beat poets, artists, The Hotel Chelsea, Andy Warhol, music, and memoir. The only problem was that I was inundated with reading assignments for classes and bills to pay for tuition and books for said classes. Just Kids wasn’t constantly checked out of the library, which was probably for the best because I didn’t have the time to read it anyway. But! I have at last read it—savored it. I so greatly enjoyed Smith’s poetic voice and her obsession over Rimbaud. I liked reading about Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe’s relationship, their strivings toward art, their fashion! And I was so happy to discover that in addition to the Allen Ginsberg connection, Smith also befriended poet Gregory Corso, whose poetry I revere.
Patti Smith also began a relationship with Sam Shepard, and they end up collaborating on a play together. I find great reassurance in reading their exchange. Smith was nervous about the prospect of improvising during the play, and on page 185 of the first edition (HarperCollins, 2010), Smith asked, “What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?” Shepard replied:
“You can’t,” he said. “It’s like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another.”
From Just Kids I learned a lot about being part of the “scene,” which comes across as important to the evolution and success of one’s career. However, this little line spoken by Sam Shepard is a solid reminder that in writing and in life the beat goes on. If you miss a beat, you improvise and create another.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 