Harold Norse

Historical recordings made by Harold Norse when he was living with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Gregory Corso at the notorious Beat Hotel in Paris during the early sixties. By the time Norse arrived in Paris he had traveled extensively in Morocco and Europe and his poetry was already championed by people like W. H. Auden, William Carlos Williams and Tennessee Williams.

Together with Sinclair Beiles, Burroughs and Gysin, Norse was one of the first to apply the cut-up method. He made the technique totally his own creating a hallucinogenic, irrational world of bizarre characters. His surreal stories were collected in ‘Beat Hotel’ and is one of the important novels of cut-up fiction. At some point Harold bought a tape recorder and recorded himself reading his delirious cut-ups and his translations of satirical, erotic and obscene sonnets by the 19th century Roman poet G.G. Belli. Also included are a few soundexperiments and ‘field recordings’. An essential document of a true visionary!