In this widely acclaimed memoir, one of the most admired writers of his generation reveals how a decade of alcohol, drugs, and other indulgences led him not to the palace of wisdom but to a psychiatric hospital in one of New York's less exalted boroughs. At once a harrowing personal story and a dazzling exploration of ancestral inheritance, cultural mythology, and the very idea of self, The Black Veil indelibly captures and conveys what it means to be young and confused, older and confused, guilty, lost, and finally healed.