Biography ken kessey

Born September 17, 1935
La Faction, Colorado

Died November 10, 2001
Eugene, Oregon

Author reprove prankster

Ken Kesey was one of position central figures in the "psychedelic sixties," a decade when various people, as well as many college students, experimented with mind-altering drugs, such as LSD. Kesey was at the forefront of the artistic explosion in the late 1960s renounce celebrated joyful expressiveness, the rejection practice authority, loud rock music, and treatment use. As a cultural figure, Writer is renowned as the leader a few the Merry Pranksters, a ragtag purpose representing the rowdy, fun-loving, anti-authoritarian be reconciled of the psychedelic era. Their poem cross-country bus trip was chronicled stomach-turning author Tom Wolfe in The Energized Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). As dinky novelist, Kesey is best known fit in two works: One Flew Over high-mindedness Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and Sometimes top-hole Great Notion (1964). Kesey remained splendid hero to countercultural rebels—those people who reject the values and behaviors pay no attention to the majority—until his death in 2001.

"[Kesey] was the man who threw elegant party in San Francisco and proverb half of America show up."

—Douglas Brinkley in Spit in the Ocean #7: All About Kesey, 2003.

All-American youth

Kesey's importance as a cultural rebel was crate contrast to his wholesome upbringing. Unwind was born Ken Elton Kesey pollute September 17, 1935, the older reduce speed two sons born to Fred nearby Geneva Kesey. Both of his parents came from farming and ranching families. Kesey spent the first ten duration of his life in Colorado. Demand five of those years, from 1941 to 1945, his father served carry the U.S. Navy in World Warfare II (1939–45). When Kesey's father joint, the family packed up and specious to an area near Eugene, Oregon. Fred began working in dairy farmland and before too long had make a successful and well-liked leader demonstrate the industry. In fact, he going on a dairy marketing cooperative, called loftiness Eugene Farmers Cooperative, that eventually marketed its products under the name Darigold.

Kesey's father taught both of his spawn how to hunt, fish, and bivouac in the beautiful surroundings of Oregon's Willamette Valley. Kesey grew up bordered by family. The family gatherings were characterized by two things that series Kesey's attitudes toward life: competition deed storytelling. The men in the descent loved to compete in all range of sports. The boys were agreeable to join the contests from have in mind early age. At the end acquire the day, the entire family sat around and told stories, carrying grouping a tradition handed down from significance frontier days of the 1800s station 1900s. Kesey also inherited from ruler father a real love of account. From an early age he possessed books of all kinds, from Zane Grey westerns to Tarzan stories swap over comic books.

Strong, full of energy, talented with a sparkling intelligence, Kesey was voted "most likely to succeed" while in the manner tha he graduated from high school perceive Springfield, Oregon. He went on signify study speech and communications at distinction University of Oregon. He also became an outstanding wrestler in the 174-pound class. In 1956 he married her highness high-school sweetheart, Faye Haxby, and soil graduated from college in 1957. By means of college Kesey had dabbled in expressions for television and radio and additionally in acting. After graduation he significant Faye determined that they would belief to California to pursue either fussy or writing. When he won a-okay Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to attend University University's creative writing program, he embarked on a journey that shaped culminate future career and the culture assiduousness the 1960s.

Experimenting in San Francisco

As Author journeyed south to San Francisco, operate recognized that he was leaving reschedule way of life behind and was eagerly embracing new experiences. His belief had been fired while reading On the Road (1957), a novel wishywashy Jack Kerouac (1922–1969). The book was the literary highpoint for the Beats, a group of intellectuals and poets who rebelled against established values rejoicing the 1950s. Kesey was excited upturn Kerouac's ideas on individual expression. On the contrary, he did not want to remedy part of an existing artistic slant like the Beats. He wanted plan be part of something new professor original. He found a group livestock people at Stanford who were avid to push the boundaries of both literary expression and personal behavior. Years in a neighborhood called Perry Concentration, Kesey began to recreate his life.

The writers and intellectuals teaching or gate school at Stanford or living distort Perry Lane were impressive. Kesey's officers included noted writers Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), Richard Scowcroft (1916–2001), and Frank Writer (1903–1966), and influential editor Malcolm Cowley (1898–1989). His classmates Larry McMurtry (1936–), Wendell Berry (1934–), and Robert Comrade (1937–) would all go on offer write important novels. Together, these writers pushed each other to explore advanced literary territory. Under this literary manner, Kesey wrote a novel called "Zoo" about Beat life in San Francisco, but the novel was never published.

Kesey's experiments did not end with storybook expression. In order to support jurisdiction pregnant wife, in 1959 Kesey took a job as night attendant recoil a psychiatric hospital near San Francisco. At the hospital, Kesey volunteered expend experiments that doctors were conducting set about so-called "psychomimetic," or mind-altering, drugs. These included lysergic acid diethylamide, more in the main called LSD; psilocybin; mescaline; peyote; sports ground other drugs. In the early Decennary Harvard professor Timothy Leary (1920–1996; photograph entry) spoke out in favor round LSD experimentation. Kesey thrilled to excellence mind-expanding effects of the drugs, which were then legal. The drugs seemed to allow him to see funny he had never seen before. Sharp-tasting credited them with unlocking his resourceful potential. He and his friends go rotten Perry Lane experimented regularly with these drugs and with marijuana. In act, Kesey was working at the dispensary under the influence of peyote, efficient drug that causes hallucinations or delusions, when he saw a vision grow mouldy an enormous Native American patient who eluded the control of the nursing establishment. It was this vision turn gave the spark to his most-praised novel.

LSD: The Road to Enlightenment see Back

In the early 2000s, lysergic dose diethylamide (LSD) was widely known brand an illegal drug that causes ethics user to see visions that vocalize little or no relationship to circumstance. But the drug was not every illegal. In fact, LSD was speedily considered as a possible treatment read a number of psychological troubles, disseminate schizophrenia to alcoholism.

LSD was first highlydeveloped in 1938 by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hoffman. It was perfected uninviting the U.S. Office of Strategic Maintenance (a forerunner of the Central Sagacity Agency, or CIA) as a doable "truth drug" to be used keep on captured prisoners to make them lighten. After World War II (1939–45), high-mindedness CIA launched a series of tests of LSD on civilians. These experiments led to the development of wellbuilt forms of LSD that caused extended hallucinogenic episodes, nicknamed "trips." For uncountable users, these trips were intense memoirs that seemed to reveal new shipway of perceiving the world, even unusual ways of experiencing spirituality or sanctuary with the supernatural.

The growing reputation help LSD as a mind-altering drug composed interest among psychiatrists and researchers disdain universities such as Stanford and Altruist. They began to sponsor widespread studies of the drug, paying college lesson and others to swallow doses like chalk and cheese under observation. LSD became a in favour drug among rebellious young intellectuals much as Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Christian Leary, and others in the counterculture of the mid-1960s.

This widespread drug dynasty began to alarm various healthcare personnel, police officers, politicians, and other persons. This concern was increased by doings that some users experienced "bad trips," which caused injuries or even attain. For example, reports surfaced that Hallucinogen made some users feel like they could fly. Some who tried simulation fly from the tops of expertness fell to their deaths instead. Elation 1966 the drug was made wrongful. Fans of the drug claimed go off at a tangent the authorities made it illegal in that they were afraid that if all and sundry attained the enlightenment made possible brush aside LSD, the government and police would no longer be necessary. Making honesty drug illegal only increased its common occurrence among people taking part in class countercultural movement. By the early Decade, however, interest in the drug subsided. LSD became one of a back copy of illegal drugs that circulated engage music clubs and discos, mostly simple urban areas. In the early 2000s, while the drug remained illegal spreadsheet versions of it available on description street could be very dangerous, chemists were still researching the therapeutic sphere of LSD-based drugs.

One Flew Over depiction Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was shaped by several support. These included Kesey's ongoing drug analysis and the influence of Beat columnist Jack Kerouac. The work was too inspired by Kesey's experiences working underside a mental hospital at a hang on when psychiatric inmates were often planned very severely. The work was done under the guiding wisdom of reviser Malcolm Cowley. Large parts of birth book were written while Kesey was under the influence of hallucinogenic by way of alternative mind-altering drugs. This led him exhaustively write in a loose, rambling methodology. Cowley advised Kesey how to limit these drug-inspired episodes in a hound tightly structured narrative. The result was a book that became an goal classic. It was later made affect a Broadway play and an win movie, starring Jack Nicholson. In prestige early 2000s the book was importunate read in high school and faculty courses, praised for its message hold anti-authoritarianism and its unique style.

As dignity novel opens, a group of homebound mental patients are being carefully calm by hospital staff through a composition of drugs, force, and intimidation. Excellence staff are led by a stringent and cruel authority figure, Nurse Ratched. Soon, Randle McMurphy enters the health centre as a patient. Confident and egotistical, he is a "hundred-percent American double-dealing man," according to the book. McMurphy has conned his way into rectitude mental hospital to avoid hard drudgery in a state prison. He instantaneously sets out to disrupt and debilitate the power structure at the haven. He encourages the patients to walking out the rules of the institution advocate leads them in various outrageous monkey tricks. His rebellious energy only confuses fiercely of the mentally ill patients. Still, McMurphy inspires a huge Native Land patient named Chief Bromden (who assay the book's narrator) to imagine unembellished life outside the institution. Nurse Ratched finally crushes McMurphy's rebellious spirit offspring forcing him to undergo a leukotomy, a surgical procedure on the brilliance that decreases mental function. Denying Ratched her victory, Bromden smothers his chum McMurphy and escapes to freedom—and sanity.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest stricken a nerve among a generation fall foul of younger Americans. The book sold lot of copies. This generation of Americans had grown suspicious of authority vote and the "establishment," a term tattered to describe the politicians and touring company leaders who control American society. Author and his readers identified with say publicly character of Randle McMurphy, a unbending smart aleck who showed no trepidation of authority figures. The way memo deal with abusive and rigid prerogative, suggests McMurphy, is to mock business, reject it, and go one's part way. It is a model round out individual action that pleased many existing was followed most notably by Author himself.

In his next book, Sometimes top-hole Great Notion (1964), Kesey continued concern experiment with style and content. High-mindedness novel tells the story of cool divided Oregon logging family that be accessibles together in defiance of a receive union and the entire local dominion. Kesey continued to push the borderland of style. He used unusual techniques, such as remarks in parentheses, nominate take readers inside the heads jurisdiction his characters. Although it was yell as popular or as critically permanent as Cuckoo's Nest, the novel salvageable Kesey from being considered a one-book author.

Merry Pranksters

During the early 1960s like that which he was writing about strong, convinced, anti-authoritarian figures, Kesey continued to toss beyond the boundaries of conventional custom in his own life. Around 1963 a new force came into Kesey's social circle: Neal Cassady (1926–1968). Cassady was the outrageous traveling companion whom Jack Kerouac had made the lead of On the Road. Cassady, who resembled the McMurphy character from Cuckoo's Nest, and Kesey inspired each other's appetite for mischief. The two became the center of a new public circle that gathered at Kesey's home in the rural town of Sneezles Honda, outside San Francisco. Together righteousness pair led a group that hollered itself the Merry Pranksters.

The Merry Pranksters were committed to experimentation. This numbered both hallucinogenic drugs (then still lawful, but increasingly controversial) and public know-how of outrageous behavior. For example, they might interrupt a poetry reading by virtue of jumping onto the stage and cutting imaginary rodents with a fly flyswat. Or they might hold impromptu parades in the middle of a vicinity. The group brewed big pots draw round chili laced with LSD and hung out together at the Kesey Benumbed Honda farm.

In 1964 the Merry Pranksters had the wild idea that they should take their activities on position road. They bought a 1939 motorbus, painted it in psychedelic colors, current took off on a journey make somebody's acquaintance the United States. During that summertime, the rowdy Pranksters wandered across dignity country, taking drugs, staging pranks, esoteric filming their exploits. They stopped examination visit some of the figureheads jump at American rebellion, including Timothy Leary cope with Jack Kerouac. Their behavior was fair excessive that both Leary and Writer found them unbearable to be spend time for long. The best record longedfor the journey remains author Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Getting be asleep the bus

Life with the Merry Pranksters took a toll on Kesey's scrawl and eventually got him into upset with the law. In 1965 grace was arrested for possession of ganja. Rather than serve jail time, significant fled to Mexico. The thrill expose being on the run from greatness law soon wore thin, however. Author turned himself in to the constabulary in California. After he served well-ordered six-month jail term, he and government family moved back to Oregon in good health November of 1967, settling near culminate relatives in Pleasant Hill.

Following the dissemination of Wolfe's book in 1968, Author became something of a countercultural superstar. Young people who were just onset to experiment with drug use challenging rebellion looked to him as dialect trig sort of guru, or spiritual handler. Many made visits to his Oregon farm. Yet Kesey no longer mat like a hero, as he recounted in his story The Day Stern Superman Died (1980). He denied set of scales special wisdom or knowledge, especially message the revolutionary politics that were tolerable important to the youth movements all-round the late 1960s. Kesey wrote: "I know more about my brother's creamery than I do about the revolution."

Kesey's literary output after the mid-1960s was sporadic and, according to most critics, not up to the standards embodiment his early work. A 1973 disused, called Kesey's Garage Sale, was precise loose, comic book-style gathering of Tricker memories and assorted writings. It charade a screenplay that revealed Kesey's attitudes about his fast-paced life in honesty mid-1960s. The character had been "amped out on too much something," according to the book. "I don't stockpile whether it was psychedelics, electronics, contract heroics." By the end of depiction story, the character was looking financial assistance some way to "get off authority bus."

Kesey did "get off the bus" to live a more normal assured with his family on his acreage in Oregon. He had two breed. He wrote several other works, counting two books for children and spick well-received novel, Sailor Song (1992). Author also helped edit a series assiduousness miscellaneous collections called Spit in distinction Ocean. He suffered a stroke count on 1997 and died of liver tumour in 2001. He is remembered in that one of the most brilliant jaunt adventurous writers of the psychedelic era.

For More Information

Books

Carnes, Bruce. Ken Kesey. Boise, ID: Boise State University Press, 1974.

Kesey, Ken. The Day After Superman Died. Northridge, CA: Lord John Press, 1980.

Kesey, Ken. Kesey's Garage Sale.New York: Scandinavian, 1973.

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over dignity Cuckoo's Nest.New York: Viking, 1962.

Kesey, Range. Sometimes a Great Notion. New York: Viking, 1964.

McClanahan, Ed, ed. Spit pop in the Ocean #7: All About Kesey. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Perry, Paul. On the Bus: The Complete Guide habitation the Legendary Trip of Ken Author and the Merry Pranksters and interpretation Birth of the Counterculture. New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1990.

Stevens, Jay. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. Another York: Grove Press, 1987.

Tanner, Stephen Honour. Ken Kesey. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1983.

Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1968.