I've been looking for texts which are written in first person, and the narrator is who is telling the story is doing that through a distorted perspective. A madman, a drunk, drugged person telling a story.
Hi Bruno,
I suggest that you find out more about the works of
Fitz Hugh Ludlow, a tremendous writer who died at the tender age of 34 after writing voluminously under the influence of
hashish - he became addicted. I've read a number of his writings and been greatly impressed. (It's amazing some of these relatively unknown writers when there are readers who decry the lack of talent out there, past or present. But of course, it's a matter of personal taste as well.)
http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow/THE/Biography/biography.html
There's also
Samuel Taylor Coleridge who wrote considerably under the influence of
opium.
While Coleridge is by far the more famous of the two, Ludlow, in my opinion, is by far the greater writer and light-years ahead of Coleridge's school-bookishly conventional poetry.
In addition there's
Bayard Taylor, who wrote
The Vision of Hasheesh in - get this -
1854, a man Ludlow read:
http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow/Texts/taylor.html
Each of these men were true pioneers in the exploration of chemical substances upon human consciousness and creativity a hundred years before others came along.
In Bukowski's case - he's unprecedented, in my view. What's amazing about him is that even when writing under the influence, he came across as more sane and insightful than 90 percent of the writers who were sober. It's perhaps opposite from what one might expect, and that's a doctoral thesis for someone. In other words, alcohol seemed to release him from his inhibitions and his perceptions became
sharper. I can't say this of any other writer I've ever read. It's something of a miracle and the result of the way his brain was wired for genius. Barbet Schroeder's
Bukowski Tapes is a perfect example of him in action under the influence, in additional to most of the man's writings. When he was sick at the end of his life, he wrote many of his poems while
not under the influence. Can anyone tell the difference between the two? Perhaps and perhaps not. There was also
William Faulkner (alcohol) and
Jack Kerouac (all-night writing sessions using stimulants).
Good luck, Poptop
