"... who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and
subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the
madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide,
demanding instantaneous lobotomy ..."
(From
'Howl (for Carl Solomon)'
by
Allen Ginsberg)
Yes, Carl Solomon really did throw potato salad during a lecture on Dadaism. He and his friends were making an artistic statement by doing this, but years later when Solomon pleaded for a lobotomy to end his psychotic anguish he was not being artistic.
Solomon is only famous for his friendship with Ginsberg, who met him in a waiting room at a psychiatric hospital. Ginsberg was just visiting his mother; Solomon was a regular, and would continue to be. Despite his mental problems he had a hyperactive intelligence, and was able to teach Ginsberg (not exactly a dummy himself) about numerous important writers and obscure geniuses, despite the fact that Ginsberg was two years older.
Carl Solomon's uncle was A. A. Wyn, publisher of Ace paperback books. Carl worked intermittently for his uncle, and Ginsberg pleaded with Carl and his uncle to help publish his then-unpublishable friends William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Ace Books finally used Burroughs' first novel, 'Junky,' as half of a pulp thriller "Two Books In One." But they were among the many publishers who turned down Kerouac's 'On The Road.'
Solomon was never a writer himself, although people always thought he was. Later in life he gave in and fulfilled the expectation by writing two book of elliptical, erudite and quaintly psychotic short essays, "Mishap, Perhaps" in 1966 and "More Mishaps" in 1968. His "Emergency Messages," more in the same vein, was published in 1989.