Anyone know more about him?? I read him a lot and I’ve been reading his bio. His story is very similar to mine in a lot of ways in his teens and twenties. But I don’t fully understand it? Seems he was troubled mentally, maybe not sz. But they thought his life was going to be a lifetime institutionalized but he turned it around.
My doctor once told me “if you don’t start meds in the next week or so, you may end up being hospitalized for the next…50 years”. Is how he said it. They were saying similar things about Allen. And he turned it around. We’re also Jewish Gemini’s. Me and Ginsberg. Poet/writers. I should look up to this guy!!
I don’t know much about him, but his very close friend, Kerouac was suffering for schizothipal personality with sz ’ inclination s’ in his books Allan appears under a lot of aliases
He underwent eight months of psychiatric care during that period and was pleased to be pronounced by the doctors as neither psychotic nor schizophrenic, but ‘‘just an average neurotic.’’
I only know James Joyce was “schizoid” and alcoholic. His daughter Lucia had sz and died in a hospital. Virginia Woolf had mental issues. Ezra Pound. All modern literary figures.
Don’t think so. You have to remember there is a pretty exhaustive history of substance abuse and creativity. Always makes it hard to diagnose others with respect to history and I’d say although sympathetic I don’t think he would be diagnosed if he went through today’s systems.
He is an amazing artist. His poem ‘America’ is one of my all time favorites. Great poet!
America is my favorite too. In the introduction to the book I read they say he was considered early in his life likely to follow in his mother’s footsteps of psychosis and spent months in a psych ward. I guess he just thought he might get it but he avoided getting it somehow.