Many years ago, I read Lindner’s book after a friend advanced a thesis about who Kirk Allen was. The way it was written, Paul Linebarger didn’t make any sense as the person Lindner was writing about. I’ve read a lot of Smith (again, years ago), and this person just didn’t fit–not to mention he seemed to be writing for himself and not for publication.

My friend’s thesis is this: Lindner talked about the person having the same name as three SF characters in different series. John Carter fits the bill. My friend asked a friend who knew about whatever project the patient was supposed to have worked on, “Was there a John Carter on that project?” and got an “I think so.”

Vague, I know. Like I say, it’s been years. But I definitely came out of reading the article (which I read knowing it was rumored to be about Linebarger) going no way jose!

It also seems like Kirk Allen’s situation in “The Jet-Propelled Couch” has some elements in common with the experiences of most writers of imaginative fiction — SF or otherwise; I mean writers of fiction not set in the present day or in living memory — and probably most really devoted readers of imaginative fiction as well. Early feelings of isolation, conflicts we need to escape, feelings of guilt or hostility we aren’t allowed to express, the desire to project ourselves into a distant place or time…these are so obviously pertinent to the lives of every writer or fan I’ve ever known that it hardly bears saying!

But all that said, I’d strongly favor the theory that “Kirk Allen” is not Paul Linebarger but a composite. Speaking only as a reader who knows nothing about your father other than what’s in his stories — and nothing about psychology other than reading popular books — I just can’t see the man treated by Lindner becoming Cordwainer Smith in particular. Smith stories are literary and intellectual puzzles. They’re full of wordplay and allusion and obvious artifice, points where he delights in the unreliability of the narrator’s voice. Would someone who had been delusional and believed his imaginings were literally true then turn around to treat those same inventions so lightly and playfully? It doesn’t feel right somehow. I could just about imagine “Kirk Allen” later writing up his fantasies and having them published as SF…but they wouldn’t be written the way Smith wrote.

I wish I could explain this better! But it’s simply an intuition on my part, and one stemming from almost perfect ignorance of all the relevant information. Perhaps it’s just a delusion of my own…