Zone of the interior / by Clancy Sigal.

"Sid Bell, the hero and narrator of this warm, hilarious, and satiric odyssey into che hospital corridors and mentalities of established madness, is a Chicago writer fed up with America and exiled in London. Urged by his friends to seek psychotherapy to break his writer's block, Bell begins the journey into his "zone of the interior" and the world of the charismatic, miracle-making Scottish guru Dr. Willie Last, who deliberately thrusts him over the edge into schizophrenia. Willie Last is also a Western film fan, and needs Sid Bell to be his sidekick in the "Gunfight at OK Corral" fantasies he indulges in. At Meditation Manor, a free-for-all schizophrenic circus, Bell finally penetrates the spiritual ionosphere of fashionable lunacy with some of the goofier sorts of mysticism- Sufism, gypsy palm reading, and even as an "urban shaman" with healing powers. In practice, it is overrun by zany Americans who turn the church into a mixture of "Laugh In" and "Hellzapoppin'." "Dr. Dick" Drummond, an ideologue of lunacy, Les O'Brien, an unflappable psychiatric ward nurse, Percy the Radio- these are a few of the remarkable characters who figure in Connolly House, a different kind of sanctuary for schizophrenics who live in equality with the staff, pursuing their inner journey wherever it leads them."--Provided by publisher.