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20 comments to "5 Classics Written Under the Influence"
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Badjuk
May 16th, 2008 at
4:34 am
Jerzy Andrzejewski was a homo, who had two wives.
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Robert Seddon
May 16th, 2008 at
5:01 am
Oh, Being and Nothingness isn’t that bad. It just has stretches where Sartre tries too hard to emulate Heidegger. Now Heidegger: there was a tricky writer, the kind of philosopher who tries to redesign his entire language (leading to some deeply weird-sounding translations about being-in-the-world and ready-to-handness). Like Kant: supposedly one German university advises its undergraduates to read the Critique of Pure Reason in its English translation, because the original German is so difficult.
Sartre? Positively lucid. It’s best to study Heidegger first, though, because B&N is really a piece of technical phenomenology with roots in Sartre’s early interest in psychology (he previously wrote a Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions), rather than a manifesto for Existentialism. I get the impression it’s been mis-sold to you in that respect.
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MoonCake
May 16th, 2008 at
5:36 am
and what about the great hunter s. thompson? he was inebriated his entire life… i think his entire existance was a figment of his own imagination.
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Grey
May 16th, 2008 at
6:26 am
What about the Hitchhiker’s Guide? Isn’t it obvious?
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Kieleth
May 16th, 2008 at
6:48 am
I miss Aldous Huxley and P.K.Dick here but…
Damm interesting post, thanks!
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Gwen
May 16th, 2008 at
7:50 am
Well, this explains a lot…
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Jade
May 16th, 2008 at
8:57 am
What about Syd Barrett?
Some of his songs were written while he was under the influence. -
Scott Wetterschneider
May 16th, 2008 at
9:26 am
I wonder if the feeling of “it all being there” regarding Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem wasn’t itself a drug induced fantasy. An untestable hypothesis, sure, but during dreams, I know I generate false memories, beliefs, and the strong sense of awesome ideas, when really, none of them are actual more than emotional impulses.
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Adam Stanhope
May 16th, 2008 at
9:42 am
re: Burroughs…
Heroin has nothing to do whatsoever with “psychedelics.”
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Thomas
May 16th, 2008 at
10:24 am
I think the list is missing one classic crazy, drug-abusing writer: Hunter S. Thompson. Need I say more?
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anon
May 16th, 2008 at
10:28 am
What’s with the apostrophe in T’ang? He was Chinese, not Klingon.
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L
May 16th, 2008 at
11:25 am
LOL @ Gérard de Nerval and his pet lobster. I was instantly reminded of Homer and Pinchy!
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Namowal
May 16th, 2008 at
2:29 pm
Wow. The only talent I get under the influence poor concentration. Not so with these guys.
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Bento
May 16th, 2008 at
5:28 pm
I’m with MoonCake, why no reference to the Great Raul Duke?
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Fritz
May 16th, 2008 at
8:25 pm
Exactly HST he had more chemicals in his system then all those jokers combined
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Ali S.
May 16th, 2008 at
8:52 pm
I don’t know why but I love the poem “Kubla Khan” the images it evokes are so vivid yet understandable to those of us who don’t partake in hallucinogens. I even have it printed out and stuck to my door because I just love the wording and imagery.
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Jason
May 19th, 2008 at
2:29 pm
Hemingway had an alcohol problem, yet I don’t think he drank at all while writing.
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Alexis
May 21st, 2008 at
12:04 pm
Hemingway made a point not to EVER drink while he wrote. This was a cardinal rule for him. Although he did have quite a problem. Perhaps Hunter S. Thompson would have been a better pick for this article, as Hemingway doesn’t fit the criteria.
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dele
June 1st, 2008 at
1:35 am
HST will never have anything on Burroughs.
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DAVE ID
June 28th, 2008 at
7:21 pm
Its existence is more important than its actual worth as literature
Well said.
Fantastic article by the way.
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