The Man Inside (novel)

At the time, because of the author's name and the tale of a quest for higher consciousness, some readers believed the novel had been written under a pseudonym by Alan Watts.

Along with a description of the characters, the story was only briefly described on the back cover as "Strange, hallucinatory, following its own inner logic down unexpected paths, The Man Inside is a novel of startling originality, a journey towards wisdom—like Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf—that culminates in revelation."

This happened in a serendipitous fashion as director Kurt Burk, while waiting at a Los Angeles taco stand, wandered into a used book store and picked up the novel.

One Brick's synopsis:Caro, an adolescent amnesiac orphan, is mysteriously dropped off at a Rhode Island Boys' School in the fall of 1965.

Miss Wills begins a controversial treatment, and, at the brink of curing him, Caro is devastated by a horrible dream and flees, penniless, to New York City.