What do you think?
Rate this book
The Last Museum
A wealthy Californian plans to buy the Parisian hotel that was home to Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs in the sixties, and ship it to America, where it is to be reassembled on the San Andreas Fault as a museum
- GenresFictionLiterary Fiction
186 pages, Paperback
First published August 25, 1986
3 people are currently reading
150 people want to read
About the author
Brion Gysin
42 books90 followersJohn Clifford Brian Gysin, raised in Canada and England, was a peripheral figure in the Beat movement of the mid-20th century.
After serving is the U.S. Army during WWII, he received one of the first Fulbright Fellowships in 1949. A decade later he became closely associated with Beat writer William S. Burroughs. Their popularization of the Dadaist "cut-up technique" are the primary source of Gysin's literary fame.
After serving is the U.S. Army during WWII, he received one of the first Fulbright Fellowships in 1949. A decade later he became closely associated with Beat writer William S. Burroughs. Their popularization of the Dadaist "cut-up technique" are the primary source of Gysin's literary fame.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 28, 2020
It is a life sentence, seven decades long, the week that Dr Adam was talking about. I'm living it, dreaming it. [...] I run my bare hands over my ruined body, this wreck of my rocket I am still locked into after my crash, after my bonedeep burning with cobalt, my operations with their disastrous anaesthetics and my other accidents mishaps misadventures and misdirections, a long life and a glorious one. They say I complain and I do but let's leave that for later. I've had a good, even a great run for my money. I've run through a great deal of life and a great deal of money. I was loved in my time and I loved. I did not love myself, never. Those who do not love themselves are always right.
I expected this novel to be raucous, rambunctious, tumultuous and hilarious, and I wasn't disappointed. It also has longueurs, especially when the narrator gets into those complaints, railing against the world in general and (tiresomely) feminists in particular. But for the most part it was funny and full of energy. If I'd written this review straight after finishing it yesterday afternoon, it would have been three stars.
What I hadn't expected was that it would also turn out to be heartbreaking, in ways that haunted me overnight. This narrator tumbling through the bardo is so evidently, so painfully, the real-life Gysin, hurtling through torment towards death. The "accidents mishaps misadventures" he recounts are only superficially fictionalised, and once you stop laughing and sober up you realise how horrific they are. The most riotous set piece is .
I don't know which version of The Tibetan Book Of The Dead inspired The Last Museum. At the time Gysin was writing, there were two English translations available, neither of them complete. The most likely candidate is the Evans-Wentz translation, which was the standard edition for several decades. It's now regarded as a bit off-beam, not least because of the misleading parallels Evans-Wentz drew with the so-called Egyptian Book Of The Dead (although in reality neither sacred text even has that title, let alone any other similarities).
That may or may not matter from a literary-historical point of view, but for me it was part of the heartbreak. The Last Museum's bitter narrator experiences all of the suffering of a Buddhist worldview, but little of the compassion.
June 9, 2024
Gysin’s *The Process* is one of my favourite novels, a crazy and hilariously mystical road-trip on foot through the Morocco that tourists never see. While not at the same level as that earlier book, *The Last Museum* was certainly good fun to read, a rollicking good-natured demi-satire on a particular hashish-laced corner of modern popular culture featuring hippies, mystics, bohemians, gurus and mad psychologists in a hotel where dead people go while awaiting reincarnation. The Beat Hotel Bardo is ruled by secret Tibetan Lamas and each of its forty-nine rooms must be experienced one at a time by Little PG Six, the wealthy collector who is the main protagonist. Having woken up inside the hotel after a fatal accident, he is forced into spiritual and sexual adventures against his will in order to progress through the levels of the hotel in an attempt to finally leave and achieve nirvana.
July 26, 2018
After penning such a stunning debut in The Process, Gysin set the bar pretty damn high for himself for his second novel.
And while this novel is not as polished and doesn't feature the same level of beautiful prose that we saw in The Process, it is entertaining and more macabre a la M. Samuel Beckett.
As Burroughs mentions in the introduction, Gysin has written a modern-day 'Book of the Dead' which takes place in the Bardo Hotel or Beat Hotel, where Burroughs completed The Naked Lunch (although much of it was written in Morocco), where Corso wrote Bomb (one of his most famous poems), where Harold Norse wrote The Beat Hotel about the very establishment itself and where Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, Burroughs and Corso collaborate on a cut-up project, which is THE cut-up manifesto called Minutes to Go.
Other famous beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovksy and Jack Kerouac all spent some time here too.
Therefore, in order to memorialize not only this now legendary location, of which Gysin himself was a long-standing resident, but also to put on a pedestal among other historical heritages and relics of our times such as The Parthenon of Greece, PG Six (the main protagonist and the narrator of sorts) is having the Beat Hotel (also known as the Bardo Hotel because the 'bardo' comes from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) moved slowly piece by piece room by room to his museum in Malibu California (the MOM) as part of his growing collection of historical exhibits.
Along the way, PG Six talks with doctors, Burroughs and Dr. Benway (from Naked Lunch) make several appearances, Thai transvestites, dykes on bikes, Sheereefa (who I think is based on the arab lover of Jane Bowles who was bisexual like her husband), various princesses, moguls and heiresses etc. It is such a weird crew of people but they all have on thing in common - they are all already dead and eithe awaiting or trying to avoid rebirth.
Like in The Process, the narrative changes course quite regularly and some chapters are a complete 'about face' leaving you wonder where you actually are sometimes. I have only read the first chapter of Finnegans' Wake but it had the same dream-like character to the book about it except that it is much more readable than Joyce's final chef d'oeuvre.
To be honest, I didn't especially enjoy the first couple of chapters but the second half of the book is written superbly and is very funny and witty in parts. It's a real shame that Gysin couldn't have lived a few more years. If he had been able to, he could have turned this into a REAL classic. I have heard that the entire manuscript (something like 900 pages) from which this 186-page novel has been culled, is in a library in Georgia of all places. Here's hoping that just like with the original manuscript of Kerouac's first novel, The Town and the City, this will also be published in its entirety one day.
Recommended but not for everyone. Oh, I forgot to mention that this book is very sexually graphic in parts so not for the faint of heart or the incorrigible prudes.
And while this novel is not as polished and doesn't feature the same level of beautiful prose that we saw in The Process, it is entertaining and more macabre a la M. Samuel Beckett.
As Burroughs mentions in the introduction, Gysin has written a modern-day 'Book of the Dead' which takes place in the Bardo Hotel or Beat Hotel, where Burroughs completed The Naked Lunch (although much of it was written in Morocco), where Corso wrote Bomb (one of his most famous poems), where Harold Norse wrote The Beat Hotel about the very establishment itself and where Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, Burroughs and Corso collaborate on a cut-up project, which is THE cut-up manifesto called Minutes to Go.
Other famous beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovksy and Jack Kerouac all spent some time here too.
Therefore, in order to memorialize not only this now legendary location, of which Gysin himself was a long-standing resident, but also to put on a pedestal among other historical heritages and relics of our times such as The Parthenon of Greece, PG Six (the main protagonist and the narrator of sorts) is having the Beat Hotel (also known as the Bardo Hotel because the 'bardo' comes from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) moved slowly piece by piece room by room to his museum in Malibu California (the MOM) as part of his growing collection of historical exhibits.
Along the way, PG Six talks with doctors, Burroughs and Dr. Benway (from Naked Lunch) make several appearances, Thai transvestites, dykes on bikes, Sheereefa (who I think is based on the arab lover of Jane Bowles who was bisexual like her husband), various princesses, moguls and heiresses etc. It is such a weird crew of people but they all have on thing in common - they are all already dead and eithe awaiting or trying to avoid rebirth.
Like in The Process, the narrative changes course quite regularly and some chapters are a complete 'about face' leaving you wonder where you actually are sometimes. I have only read the first chapter of Finnegans' Wake but it had the same dream-like character to the book about it except that it is much more readable than Joyce's final chef d'oeuvre.
To be honest, I didn't especially enjoy the first couple of chapters but the second half of the book is written superbly and is very funny and witty in parts. It's a real shame that Gysin couldn't have lived a few more years. If he had been able to, he could have turned this into a REAL classic. I have heard that the entire manuscript (something like 900 pages) from which this 186-page novel has been culled, is in a library in Georgia of all places. Here's hoping that just like with the original manuscript of Kerouac's first novel, The Town and the City, this will also be published in its entirety one day.
Recommended but not for everyone. Oh, I forgot to mention that this book is very sexually graphic in parts so not for the faint of heart or the incorrigible prudes.
May 1, 2023
reread, still love this magically chaotic book. it means nothing and everything. bury me with it.
August 11, 2011
A must read ======= a stonking book that escalates in manic ravngs and wondrous comments chapter by chapter!
November 1, 2024
very fun, and a little disorienting at times. enjoyed it tho all the same
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews