Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American author, best known for his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as a (counter) cultural figure whom some consider a link between the "beat generation" of the 1950s and the "hippies" of the 1960s.

Early life

Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and spent much of his youth in the Pacific Northwest. At a young age his family moved from Colorado to Springfield, Oregon. He eloped with his high-school sweetheart, Faye Haxby, before going to college. They had three children, Jed, Zane, and Shannon. Kesey later had another child, Sunshine, with fellow Merry Prankster Carolyn Adams. Kesey attended the University of Oregon's School of Journalism, where he received a degree in speech and communication in 1957. He was also an Olympic-caliber wrestler, and was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship in 1958 to enroll in the creative writing program at Stanford University, which he did the following year.

Experimentation with psychoactive drugs

At Stanford University in 1959, Kesey volunteered to take part in a study at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital on the effects of psychoactive drugs. These included LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and IT-290 (AMT). Kesey wrote many detailed accounts of his experiences with these drugs, both during the study and in years of private experimentation that followed. His role as a medical guinea pig inspired Kesey to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962. The success of this book, as well as the sale of his residence at Stanford, caused him to move to La Honda, California, in the mountains outside of San Francisco. He frequently entertained friends with parties he called "Acid Tests" involving music (such as Kesey's favorite band, The Warlocks, later known as the Grateful Dead), black lights, fluorescent paint, strobes, and other "psychedelic" effects, and of course LSD. These parties were noted in some of Allen Ginsberg's poems and are also described in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, as well as Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The inspiration for Kesey's first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came from his work at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital on the night shift. There, Kesey often spent time talking to the patients, sometimes under the influence of the hallucinogenic drugs that he volunteered to experiment with. Kesey believed that these patients were not insane, but that society had pushed them out because they did not fit the conventional ideas of how people were supposed to act and behave. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was an immediate success. It was later adapted into a successful stage play by Dale Wasserman; Miloš Forman directed a screen adaptation in 1975. The film starred Jack Nicholson and won eight Academy Awards, including the "Big Five": Academy Award for Best Picture, Academy Award for Best Actor (Nicholson), Academy Award for Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Academy Award for Best Director (Forman), Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman). Kesey, who was originally involved in creating the film, left two weeks into production. He claimed to have never seen the movie because of a dispute over the $20,000 he was initially paid for the film rights. Kesey loathed the fact that the film was not narrated, as was the book, by the character Chief Bromden.

Sometimes a Great Notion

When the publication of his second novel Sometimes a Great Notion in 1964 required his presence in New York, Kesey, Neal Cassady, and others in a group of friends they called the "Merry Pranksters" took a cross-country trip in a school bus nicknamed "Furthur" or Further. This trip, described in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and later in Kesey's own screenplay "The Further Inquiry") was the group's attempt at making art out of everyday life. In New York, Cassady introduced Kesey to Jack Kerouac and to Allen Ginsberg, who in turn introduced them to Timothy Leary. Sometimes a Great Notion was made into a 1971 film starring Paul Newman and was nominated for two Academy Awards. (In 1972, Sometimes a Great Notion was the first film shown in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on a new television network called HBO.)

Later life

Kesey was arrested for possession of marijuana in 1966. He looked for advice in a Ouija board, which told him to leave. In an attempt to mislead police, his suicide was faked when Kesey's friend left the Merry Pranksters' truck on a cliffside road near Eureka, along with a suicide note that said, "Ocean Ocean I'll beat you in the end." Kesey fled to Mexico in the back of a friend's car, an intentionally feeble attempt at disguise. When he later returned to the United States, Kesey was arrested and sent to jail for five months. When he was released, he moved with his family back to the family farm in Pleasant Hill, Oregon in the Willamette Valley, where he was to spend the rest of his life. He wrote many articles, smaller books (mostly collections of his articles), and short stories during that time. In 1997, Kesey reunited with the Merry Pranksters at a Phish concert during a performance of the song "Colonel Forbin's Ascent." It was one of his last public appearances. Kesey died on November 10, 2001.

List of Major Works

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Viking. 1962.
Sometimes a Great Notion. New York: Viking. 1964.
Kesey's Garage Sale. New York: Viking. 1972.
Demon Box. New York: Penguin. 1986.
Caverns. New York: Penguin. 1990.
The Further Inquiry (screenplay). New York: Viking. 1990.
Sailor Song. New York: Viking, Penguin. 1992.
Last Go Round (with Ken Babbs). New York: Viking. 1994.
"Twister" (play). New York: Viking. 1999.

References

External links

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