"[1] Graduating from high school at 15, Solomon attended the City College of New York (CCNY) for a short time before joining the United States Maritime Service in 1944.
Solomon first met Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in the waiting room of the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Solomon had many complaints about Ginsberg and Howl, including that he was "never in Rockland" and that the third section of the poem "garbles history completely".
[2] The poem's first section immortalizes a few of Solomon's personal exploits, such as the line "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."
Solomon's uncle, Aaron A. Wyn, owned Ace Books, a purveyor of pulp fiction and nonfiction paperbacks.