Crazier than a shithouse rat...Novel writing was the least of his eccentricities. The boy needed a good plate of eggs & bacon, and to stop hanging around with that furtive-ass poet friend of his.

Uh-oh, the writing of novels without "any particular training or background" seems like we're all screwed, along with like Hemingway, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, & EVERY OTHER WRITER who ever wanted to write!

Yeah, hasn't the Navy heard of "on the job" training?

take a long yard lookBobby Kaufman(poet) was in the merchentmarines, his good friend Harry(poet)Monroe, was also in the merchantmarines, he told me many storiesabout being on boats and drinkingwhiskey, anyway, Harry was a piscesa water sign, as was Jack Kerouac,something about water, and poetsand writers, and the drink, me thinks, Philip Lamantia(poet) wasa scorpio, another water sign,but he was more a land person,so maybe that's why he never wroteany novels, i don't know, my poetmentor was a pisces and a surfertoo, he was always writing the greatnovel, and was a poet, he always wastelling me to "write a novel"i'm a virgo with a scorpio rising,my creative energy is going towardmy opposite sign, because of my north node, which is of coursepisces,i finally wrote a novel.i was listening to Jack Kerouac readhis poetry the other day on a web site that has his recorded poems...damn, it just blows me away...his language just oozes with wonderand experience, wide-eyed and so liquid, it just flows, maaan.

He sees nothing unusual in that?Well that shows he was mentally unstable. You cannot just start writing without a certificate or something giving you permission to create, can you? What if everyone did that? We might have....more good books?Seriously, what scares the daylights out of me is the person who wrote the evaluation saw nothing unusual about thinking you could not just devote your life to literature without someone's permission or stamp of approval; AND most people still think this way. I am reminded of the blurb I read once in a psychology book in which it defined a particular disorder as the condition one has if one is overly concerned about questions of right and wrong, and how to live. Here again, the business of psychology comes up with a strange idea, namely that there are things we should be much more concerned about than questions of right and wrong and living the proper life.

Excellent point about the way psychologists think. They would have us not worry about anything as long as we pay them for the happy pills.

I'm a Gemini and I write short stories. Every now and then my twin writes poetry. But it's not really my twin, it's me. But when I write poetry, my twin sometimes writes short stories. I was in the Navy and I am fascinated by the vastness of the ocean, but I prefer to be on dry land. I mean, my twin is fascinated by the ocean. But it's really me.

I'm a scorpio who almost joined the navy, although I had my first beer on a submarine. I wanted to be a poet but realized I could write fiction better, and at least more fiction writers make a living than poets. Is that the same?

to Billectric; what can i sayDylan is a triple gemini, i believe,gemini prolly can communicate thecomplex through the most quickest route.to jymwrite: yea, scorpio gets to thebottom of the mystery; through livingit, if they servive the first sub ride intact.ha.Philip Lamantia; embodies the marvelous mystery for me, i firstcame across his poetry at a partyat a woman's house that had met himpersonaly, i was just floored by hiswords that night for some reason, mypoet surfer buddy also knew Philip, i met Rik soon after i found the book of poems by Philip.How scorpioanic is that? later we wentto see Lamantia read in San Francisco, and i met him, and saw him several times since.Rik was my mentor for some years, but Philipinitiated me.