Why, In Order To Be A Writer, D'You Need To Be Drunk, Stoned Or Crazy?

[Aerozord]

For one thing being stoned or drunk wasn't the black mark it is today.100 years ago no one would think twice about you getting high. In the time periods of many great writers they were probably on something because everyone was probably on something. I am betting these same men also smoked, but doubt that contributed to the creative process.

As for being crazy or eccentric. These are terms given to anyone outside the norm. Frankly if you were normal you probably wouldn't make a career out of writing about your imaginary friends and their adventures

[Seil]

[Jagos]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

Huh?

Not to get too religious, but you have talking bushes, snakes to staffs, etc. That's some of the greatest fiction I've ever seen in a book.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

i haven't read Mark in a while but I don't remember any of that shit happening in there. If you're going to use the bible as an example at least pick one of the mental books.

[Lumenskir]

Not to get too religious, but you have talking bushes, snakes to staffs, etc. That's some of the greatest fiction I've ever seen in a book.

So, the Ten Commandments movie...which, not to get too religious, isn't even in the same Testament as the Gospels. And there are only two Testaments.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Also my buddy Marcion would have problems even putting them in the same religion.

[Overcast]

Back in the day I used to enjoy writing after long stints without sleep. Due to the fact that I now have to work for a living it has been a bit since I have been able to reach my insomniatic nirvana, kinda miss it, but have been trying to make up for it with things like starvation and forced emotional shifting.

Cause you know I like to get my high naturally.

[Magus]

Confusing Exodus and Mark, Jagos? Next you'll be saying Jesus killed 1,000 Romans with the jawbone of an ass before writing his epistle to the Ephesians and hanging a red thread outside his window so he wouldn't be harmed when he blew a trumpet to knock down the walls of Jerusalem.

[BloodyMage]

You forgot Samuel Taylor Coleridge...maybe...

As far as Ginsburg goes, all of the Beat generation and especially Howl were seen as experimental rebellions against society at the time. How On the Road was written, and Howl's basic outcry against the lack of free thinking. You call them crazy, but they were writing in a crazy time, and trying to reflect in their writing that America had to change with the times; the west couldn't fortress itself in if it wanted to continue.

That said, the Beats generally weren't stoned or drunk, although I think they did experiment with drugs, but William Burroughs is quoted as stating quite plainly that drugs had nothing to do with their creative output:

The visions of drugs and the visions of art don't mix?

BURROUGHS:

Never. The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts, and feelings. They are painkillers, pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers - the whole spectrum of sedative drugs. As for visions and heroin, I had a hallucinatory period at the very beginning of addiction, for instance, a sense of moving at high speed through space. But as soon as addiction was established, I had no visions - vision - at all and very few dreams.

[Seil]

Cah-ray-zee.