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Searching... Salem Main Library | 813.54 Kesey 1990 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Author Notes
Ken Kesey, September 17, 1935 - November 10, 2001 Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was born in Colorado on September 17, 1935. He graduated from the University of Oregon, and published two full-length novels that helped to give him a cult following. "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1962) owes much to Kesey's own experience as a ward attendant at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital. This exciting first novel was told from the point of view of a half-Indian man who thinks of himself as the Big Chief pictured on the writing tablets of everybody's school days looking out at the other inmates in a Disneylike world. Its portrayal of the doomed but heroic rebel McMurphy stood for a particular kind of American individualism. The book was adapted into a successful stage play by Dale Wasserman, and in 1975, Milos Forman directed a screen adaptation, which won the "Big Five" Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Best Director (Forman) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman).
Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) is a long, complex novel that troubled many of his earlier readers. Kesey's most recent novel was Demon Box (1987); although it was somewhat well received, it was still compared unfavorably to his earlier works. His last major work was an essay for Rolling Stone magazine calling for peace in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
On October 25, 2001, Kesey had surgery on his liver to remove a tumor. He died of complications from the surgery on November 10, 2001. He was 66.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Kesey gained notoriety in 1964 when he and his Merry Pranksters converted a school bus into a psychedelic caravan with Neal Cassady at the wheel--a cross-country safari chronicled in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This look back at that LSD-laced adventure, written as a dramatic script, conjures a courtroom trial in which Cassady's Spirit and assorted riders on the '64 journey are held accountable for their mad melee. Kesey ( One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest ) offers fitful flashes of insight into the '60s, and Cassady's free-associative, incantatory spiels pulsate with a Beat beat, yet, for the most part, the shenanigans seem insipid and sophomoric--a nostalgia ticket for hard-core Kesey or Wolfe fans. More than 150 color photos, Pop page spreads and a photographic ``flip-book'' section recreating Cassady in action may increase salability. 50,000 first printing; QPB selection. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Author and counterculture leader Kesey stages a mock trial of the spirit of Neal Cassady--hero of Jack Kerouac's On the Road and ""the fastest man alive""--defending him with loving reportage, fragments of verbatim transcripts, and scads of photos (153 color, 256 b&w--some seen) of the Merry Pranksters and their 1964 voyage across America in a psychedelically painted bus called ""Further."" ""Ease off. Csshhh. . .New York! Somewhere north. Dig the semi passing,"" says Cassady here in an amazing stream-of-consciousness monologue that trips from speeding trucks to the laws of time and motion (""In every action or thing like pshhoooo! there's a weak spot. Now the weak spot is always attacked by the highest of the next lower forces. Like second dimensional, third dimensional, fourth dimensional. . .""). The monologue never really stops from La Honda, Cal., to N.Y.C., and it's what inspired Tom Wolfe to celebrate Cassady in The Electric Keel. Aid Acid Test as a speed-demon shaman to the nation's young. Creating an imaginary courtroom and employing screenplay format (he wrote an early version of this work as a screenplay in 1978), Kesey scrutinizes the character of the jittery, lecherous Cassady. Did he or did he not seduce and bedevil the young actress who came to be called ""Stark Naked""? Calling to the stand such stalwart fellow travelers as Gretch the Slime Queen, Zonker, and Dr, Knot, Kesey exonerates ""Cowboy Neal"" and celebrates the whole strange trip as powerful medicine for a nation stagnating behind a ""screen"" of habit: ""The situation was bound to become--still might become terminal, unless that cancerous screen is blasted away, like scales from the eye, tartar from the tooth. . ."" A psychedelic valentine for the Nineties: a wacky and slight but sweet and wistful review of the best-known trip of the Sixties. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Over 25 years ago, Kesey's Merry Pranksters painted a 1939 school bus in psychedelic colors, stocked it with cameras, sound equipment, and LSD, and headed for the New York World's Fair. The trip, celebrated in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test ( LJ 8/68), has become part of the counterculture legend. These two copiously illustrated works commemorate the silver anniversary of that historic journey. Both cover the same key events and prominently feature Neal Cassady, but their approaches are very different. Perry and Babbs have compiled a montage of photos, reminiscences, interviews, and historical commentary that documents the change in consciousness that took place in the United States between 1964 and 1972. The book provides a thumbnail history of the development of LSD, a flavor of the short-lived but influential hippie movement, and a glimpse into some of the most creative lives of the time, including Allen Ginsberg, Larry McMurtry, and Jerry Garcia. Kesey's work is a surreal script in which Cassady's ghost is brought to trial. Witnesses testify to Cassady's deeds, re-creating the bus trip for the court. The script is clever and entertaining but it will only be fully appreciated by those knowledgeable about Cassady's life. Such background can be found in Carolyn Cassady's Off the Road ( LJ 6/15/90) and William Plummer's The Holy Goof ( LJ 10/15/81). Photographs are a major part of each book, but there is little overlap. The Smithsonian's recent attempts to acquire the bus may spark reader interest. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/90.-- William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.