42- ] American Literature - Ken Kesey

42- ] American Literature 

Ken Kesey

1935–2001 

Ken Kesey, in full Ken Elton Kesey, (born September 17, 1935, La Junta, Colorado, U.S.—died November 10, 2001, Eugene, Oregon), American writer who was a hero of the countercultural revolution and the hippie movement of the 1960s. His literary reputation rests on two novels, both written before he was thirty. His fame (or notoriety) as a countercultural icon stems from his band of willful misfits, the Merry Pranksters, who openly used and advocated psychedelic drugs.  Kesey’s antics made him an object of admiration and scorn, yet his willingness to push limits and redefine normal boundaries came with a serious sense of purpose.

Kesey’s pugnacious personality was shaped during his years at Springfield High School and the University of Oregon, where he was a champion wrestler and football player. After earning his bachelor’s degree in speech and communications in 1957, he entered Stanford University’s graduate writing program on a Woodrow Wilson scholarship. There, while under the guidance of writers Wallace Stegner and Malcolm Cowley, he forged his lifelong friendship with writer Ken Babbs and absorbed the influence of Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac.

In California, Kesey was exposed to the electronic backbeat of a new cultural consciousness as well as to some of its heroes, the most important of them Neal Cassady. Equally important was his job at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, where he took LSD and mescaline as a paid volunteer.

Kesey used his experiences at the hospital to launch his writing career with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), which Time described as a protest novel that demonstrated Kesey’s “empathy for the Insider’s view of the Outsider’s world.” Much has been made of Kesey’s introduction to hallucinogenic drugs. Less discussed has been how the writer studied the thought processes of the real-life models for his characters and found his larger theme of how society and technology are used to repress the individual. Charges that the novel is anti-feminist stem from Kesey's depiction of the sadistic Big Nurse, although some critics counter that she is intended to be a distortion of womanhood, not its representative.

Kesey was educated at the University of Oregon and Stanford University. At a Veterans Administration hospital in Menlo Park, California, he was a paid volunteer experimental subject, taking mind-altering drugs and reporting on their effects. This experience and his work as an aide at the hospital served as background for his best-known novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962; film, 1975), which is set in a mental hospital. He further examined values in conflict in Sometimes a Great Notion (1964).

In the nonfiction Kesey’s Garage Sale (1973), Demon Box (1986), and The Further Inquiry (1990), Kesey wrote of his travels and psychedelic experiences with the Merry Pranksters, a group that traveled together in a bus during the 1960s. Tom Wolfe recounted many of their adventures in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). In 1967 Kesey fled to Mexico to avoid prosecution for possession of marijuana. He returned to California, served a brief sentence, and then moved to a farm near Eugene, Oregon.

In 1988  Kesey published a children’s book, Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear. With 13 of his graduate students in creative writing at the University of Oregon, he wrote a mystery novel, Caverns (1990), under the joint pseudonym of O.U. Levon, which read backward is “novel U.O. (University of Oregon).” In Sailor Song (1992), a comedy set in an Alaskan fishing village that becomes the backdrop for a Hollywood film, Kesey examined environmental crises and the end of the world. Subsequently, with the collaboration of Ken Babbs, he wrote a neo-western, Last Go Round (1994).

Works

This is a selected list of Kesey's better-known works.

—— (1962). One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-451-16396-7. OCLC 895037361.

—— (1964). Sometimes a Great Notion : a novel. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-004529-1. OCLC 813638027.

—— (1973). Kesey's Garage Sale. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-670-41268-6. OCLC 899072134. A collection of essays

—— (1986). Demon Box. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-008530-3. OCLC 911911149. A collection of essays and short stories

Levon, O. U. (1990). Caverns : a novel. Introduction by Ken Kesey. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-012208-4. OCLC 20131987. "O.U. Levon" spelled backwards produces "novel U.O" This book was jointly written by a creative writing class taught by Kesey at the University of Oregon (U.O.).

—— (1990). The Further Inquiry. photographs by Ron Bevirt. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-83174-6. OCLC 20758816. A play / photographic record

—— (1990). Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear. illustrated by Barry Moser. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-81136-6. OCLC 21339755. A children's book

—— (1992). Sailor Song. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-83521-8. OCLC 25411564. A novel

——; Babbs, Ken (1994). Last Go Round. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-84883-6. OCLC 28548975. A Western genre novel

——; Babbs, Ken (1994). Twister: A Ritual Reality in Three-Quarters Plus Overtime if Necessary. OCLC 74813266, 39040348. A play

—— (2003). Kesey's Jail Journal : Cut the M************ Loose. Introduction by Ed McClanahan. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-87693-8. OCLC 52134654. An expansion of the 1967 journals that Kesey kept while incarcerated