Brion Gysin

Gysin is significant, not for his own work, so much as for ideas that others capitalised upon; he also happily promoted his own myth. He persuaded the non-driver Bowles (who thought him the perfect travel companion) to buy a Jaguar; they travelled together in North Africa. His collaboration with Burroughs, met in North Africa and reconnected with in Paris, was substantial. Corso and Ginsberg were fellow ‘Beat Hotel’ denizens, Chopin and Heidsieck drew him into their ‘Domaine Poétique’, Haring acquired one of his ‘Dream Machines’. Giorno, met in New York, became his lover; Burroughs, despite popular lore, never was.