People in Glass Houses: Story of Schizophrenia - Taschenbuch

The book is a journey about someone with schizophrenia. It starts out in childhood from a large family from Philadelphia who are proud of the American and Irish heritage. The family subsequently suffers some horrible tragedy's as well as the authors journeying through the culture of the sixties and seventies as kid. The authors story shows a an overnight change when he becomes a teenager losing his personality in a slow decent to an eventual psychotic break by his late twenties. Despite losing much of himself the author never loses his athletic skills becoming a good bodybuilder and being fit to play in a pickup basketball games around his neighborhood. He goes to work in the construction trade that he isn't really cut out for. It is a rough and tumble existence at work and in his private life. The author focuses on his own treatment and how he treats people in an unforgiving social environment .While learning who he has been and who he has become are at a disconnect that he seeks to rectify by escaping his situation by developing a conspiracy to join the Philadelphia Eagles football team following a legal matter of the families. One of the things the author attempts to do is impart a better understanding of schizophrenia a disease that the general public has little knowledge of the full range of symptoms and the unfair social, economic and criminal punishment of these people. The book is at heart a human interest story and a political statement. The books hopes it also has an artistic value as delusions while in most instances are very unpleasant can also be very intriguing and imaginative offering a side of life that the general public would find interesting. The book has two parts and the second part is the authors poetry which focuses on love , anger, politics nature, disease and religion among other things. The author believes that his poetry is kind of like folk art while most don't have great literary value they are nonetheless interesting to read and the author hopes some of his better poems do have literary value. The poems don't make great use of metaphors in his writing most are simple rhyming poems with comparisons and a message. The author considers his poem " Like a man who was bright" to be his best poem although this is one of the few poems that won't be understood when read but hopes people enjoy the pleasant wording and flow of the poem. That poem is basically about being psychotic and in the end the writer asks the question though his experience of psychosis wasn't real to the outside world was it real nonetheless if only he experienced it. Many poems are about fishing or nature and the author likes to write about nature as well many poems the author writes are upbeat poems as well as some on despair.