LITMIR.BIZ

      Introduction

      Brion Gysin used to refer to himself as the man from nowhere—not surprising, given his multiple origins and thoroughly international existence. When Paul Bowles ran across him in New York in the 1940s, he described Gysin as then being into his fourth nationality. But perhaps the phrase that Jorge Luis Borges used to describe some of his own characters might be more appropriate: in his life as in his art, Gysin was “a man from the border.” His restless curiosity kept him always on the move, going where it pleased him, carrying no baggage; such perhaps was the ideal, yet it was also, in large measure, his inescapable reality. A nomad at heart, he kept returning—physically or imaginatively—to the various far-flung locales that had formed him.

      In this age when scholars and readers are eager to think across the disciplines, to find connections between cultures, to discern the underlying matrix of an artistic moment beyond fixed notions of identity or traditional expectations—as if any of these tendencies were new—surely it is time to reassess the work of Brion Gysin. As singular a figure as any, he was often dismissed for not being entirely a painter, nor entirely a writer, though he continued to explore both domains for some fifty years with an inquiring instinct that expressed itself differently according to the occasion. Worse for him, he did not hold still within these media, nor devote the bulk of his efforts to a chosen genre. Rather, he came and went, alert to creative openings, following his ideas in and beyond such practices simultaneously, alternately, sequentially. If some consider him essentially a painter, and his production in the visual arts possibly more accomplished, his fascination with writing and the mysteries of language remains nonetheless central to all his output—he did, after all, learn to speak seven languages. As a writer, his insightful understanding of history combined with the expansive flair of a born raconteur to set his prodigious imagination in motion: he produced long and short fiction, historical narrative, poems, song lyrics, travel pieces, memoirs, experimental forms, and more. Taken as a whole, his great versatility should be regarded not as a wild display of excess talents but instead as an ongoing method in his art of the opening, of uncovering paths which many younger artists took up in turn.

      Though Gysin has been peripherally associated with the Beat Generation writers, it is more by intermittent points of convergence and especially his long friendship with William S. Burroughs that the affiliation holds. However, his multinational background and interdisciplinary perspective as an artist, as well as a healthy skepticism toward the spiritual yearnings of many among the Beats, rather set him apart. A foreigner everywhere, he did not claim any one culture as his own; despite the fact that he rubbed shoulders with various aristocracies all his life, his sympathies lay most often with the outsider, whether in the guise of artist, immigrant or heretic, not to mention the added markers of racial or sexual difference. He recognized the advantages of his hybrid origins, which allowed him more freedom of movement as an artist and as a person, so that whatever sparks of rebellion may be found in his work can be traced to his attitude toward the fixed thinking and implicit limits of all groups. His independence, of course, had a price: if by nature and temperament he dodged most efforts to package him as a recognizable commodity, given his many fields of action, he seldom had an easy time of it when he did seek to market his products.

      Practical (or at least commercial) matters aside, the question of identity did not plague Gysin; on the contrary, it provided ample room for play. Indeed, the theme of the search for identity is found often in his

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