d carry around with him from that day on. The more Jim read, the more he started to drift away into the infinite world of poetry. He also read Lawrence Ferlinghetti, along with other favorites Kenneth Rexroth and Allen Ginsberg. "Ginsberg made one of the greatest impact, for he was the real-life Carlo Marx (On the Road)''. It was an image that stuck with Jim like glue, "the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind.” Young Morrison was greatly fascinated by Dean Moriarty, "the side burned hero of the snowy west." Jim began to copy Moriarty word for word, right down to his "hee-hee-hee-hee” laugh. Throughout the rest of his years at GWHS, Jim maintained a consistent 88.32 grade average with only minimal effort, twice being named to the honor roll. His IQ was 149. In the college boards, he scored above average. "But, statistics tell so little. The books Jim read reveal more,” comments editor of the Rolling Stone, Jerry Hopkins.Jim was greatly inspired by the writings of great philosophers and poets. "He devoured Friedrich Nietzsche, the poetic German philosopher whose views on aesthetics, morality, and the Apollonian-Dionysian duality would appear again and again in Jim's conversation, poetry, songs, and life." He read Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks, becoming enamored with Alexander the Great, admiring his intellectual and physical accomplishments. Jim adopted some of the look of Alexander: “ . . . the inclination of his head a little on one side towards his left shoulder . . .“ He read the great French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, whose style would later influence the form of Jim's short prose poems. "He read everything Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Patchen, Michael McClure, Gregory Corso, and all the other beat writers published." Jim's English teacher comments, "I felt that Jim was the only one in the class who read Ulysses, and understood it." Balzac, Cocteau, and Mo...
