Ken Kesey

The Original Prankster (The Bus 4.43)

Welcome aboard The Bus!

The Stop

Ken Kesey (1935-2001) was an American novelist and essayist. Educated at both the University of Oregon and Stanford University, his experiences taking mind-altering drugs as a paid volunteer influenced his first novel - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) - and inspired him to become one of the central figures in the 1960s counter-culture.¹

Kesey flying a kite on top of the Great Pyramid at Giza (1978)

Born in La Junta, Colorado, when he was eleven Kesey’s parents moved to Springfield, Oregon to become dairy farmers. A star wrestler and football player in high school, he attended the University of Oregon on a football scholarship but switched to wrestling as it better fit his build. While at university, in 1956 he eloped with his high school sweetheart - Norma Faye Haxby. After briefly considering a career in acting, the Keseys relocated to Palo Alto, California, when he won a scholarship to the graduate program in writing at Stanford University. At Stanford, under the guidance of writers such as Wallace Stegner and Malcolm Cowley, Kesey forged his lifelong friendship with writer Ken Babbs, fell under the influence of Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac, and participated in the drug experiment that would change his life.

In 1960, Kesey volunteered (and was paid $20 a session) for an experiment at the Menlo Park Veteran’s Hospital investigating the effects of various psychoactive drugs.² Willingly taking a host of chemicals, including LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT amongst others, Kesey found himself mentally ‘shifted over’ to where he could see the world as fully ‘dimensional.’ Unquestionably, the experiences provided him with the ‘sort of multiple perception[s] that a fledgling novelist might find extremely useful.’ Soon Kesey was working the night shift at the hospital, when the ‘medicine cabinet … was wide open for anyone who wanted to borrow an experimental chemical or two,’ and he was able to ‘swab the floor, chat with the nurses, chat with the crazy insomniacs … and do a little typing on the side.’ The outcome of these experiences was his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which he used the mental hospital as an extended metaphor to examine the abuse by the system against the individual in late 1950s America.

Kesey’s second novel was Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), released to mixed, but generally positive acclaim. To celebrate its publication, Kesey and his group of like-minded creatives - the Merry Pranksters - decided to drive from Oregon to New York City in a Day-Glo painted school bus named Further.³ Outfitted with a sound system that ‘allowed them to converse with the outside world,’ the trip was obsessively filmed with the intention of creating a unique take on movies. To Kesey and the Pranksters, the ‘world was their movie, or rather the world was a rivalry of movies. People were always trying to trap you in their movie … and the only way to prevent this was to create alternative movies.’ In the end, the trip proved to be a ‘turning point’ for Kesey who had decided to ‘‘put on another costume’ - that is, to step away from or, at least, beyond writing as an expression of his values and ideas.’

Upon his return to California, Kesey and Faye moved to La Honda, a rustic hamlet 15 miles east of Stanford where his nearest neighbour was a mile away. Here, in a ‘modern log cabin’ with ‘six large rooms … a massive fireplace and a pair of elegant French doors that opened on to six acres of redwood forest’, Kesey created a ‘community of psychedelic adventurers’ consisting of friends close and extended, the Merry Pranksters, and his favourite band, the Warlocks - who would later be known as The Grateful Dead. Black lights, strobe lights, fluorescent paint, speakers hung from the treetops blasting music at all hours of the day and night, and copious amounts of the still-legal LSD⁴ combined to fuel a constant series of parties he called ‘Acid Tests’, and the rest is counter-culture history.⁵

Over the next years, Kesey was arrested for cannabis possession, faked a suicide note, and ran off to Mexico to avoid incarceration. Upon his return to the United States he served a six-month prison sentence before relocating permanently to a farm near Eugene, Oregon. His writing ‘ebbed more than it flowed’ while he raised his family and worked his land, but he continued to contribute to ‘prestigious magazines,’ edited the 1971 supplement to Stewart Brand’s The Whole Earth Catalogue, and published three works of non-fiction: Kesey’s Garage Sale (1973), Demon Box (1986), and The Further Inquiry (1990). From 1987-1988, Kesey taught a creative-writing class at the University of Oregon in which he and his students collaborated to produced a group novel, Caverns (1989), published under the pseudonym O.U. Levon. In 1992, he published two other novels: Sailor Song and Last Go-Round: A Dime Western, the latter co-written with Ken Babbs.

In 1997, Kesey had a stroke and from then his health began to steadily decline. Following complications from surgery to remove a tumour from his liver, Kesey died on 10 November 2001 in Eugene, where he is memorialised by a life-sized sculpture of him wearing his ‘trademark touring cap reading to three children.’

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to a short (2:41) animated film by Amanda Duckworth, What Is Your Biggest Regret? Accompanying recordings of adults revealing their regrets, the minimalistic animations make all of them - whether general or specific - thought-provoking. Worth the time.

What Is Your Biggest Regret?

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion (1964). Though not as famous as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,⁶ this complex and multifaceted novel also explores themes of individualism, family conflict, and community tension, and is considered an ‘essential’ American novel.

Set in the Pacific Northwest, the story focusses on the Stamper family and its obstinate patriarch Henry’s decision to continue logging against the wishes of the union and the community. Henry’s eldest son - Hank - is determined to uphold the family tradition of self-reliance even though it isolates them from their neighbours and his wife, and Hank’s half-brother Leland, a college-educated outsider, returns home haunted by personal demons and disillusionment with the outside world. Leland’s return ignites internal conflict within the family as he challenges their beliefs and way of life, and as tensions escalate acts of increasing violence result in tragedy. Highly recommended.⁷

From the back cover: A bitter strike is raging in a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers: Henry, the fiercely vital and overpowering patriarch; Hank, the son who has spent his life trying to live up to his father; and Viv, who fell in love with Hank's exuberant machismo but now finds it wearing thin. And then there is Leland, Henry's bookish younger son, who returns to his family on a mission of vengeance - and finds himself fulfilling it in ways he never imagined. Out of the Stamper family's rivalries and betrayals, Ken Kesey crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy.

Sometimes a Great Notion (Book Review, New York Times)

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks from albums released in 1967 - the year of the ‘Summer of Love’, in many ways the apex of what Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, and their associates created.⁸ This year saw the release of an incredible number of now-classic albums - many of which are among my favourites - so the choice wasn’t easy. But, in the end, these seemed to fit the Stop. Though by the time of their release he’d moved back to Oregon, I like to think he would have blasted these tunes out of the tree-speakers at La Honda: ‘The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)’ (The Grateful Dead, The Grateful Dead (March)), ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ (The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour (November)), ‘D. C. B. A. -25’ (Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow (February)), ‘Love Me Two Times’ (The Doors, Strange Days (September)) and ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’ (Traffic, Mr Fantasy (December)). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is, of course, from Ken Kesey:

‘I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

Thanks to everyone who subscribes - your interest and support is truly appreciated. If you like The Bus, please SHARE it with a friend or two. 

If you haven’t climbed aboard The Bus, please do!

If you like The Bus, why not check out other newsletters?

The Sample sends out articles from blogs and newsletters across the web that match your interests. If you like one, you can subscribe with one click.

Until the next Stop …

1. I’ve been a Kesey fan for years - Cuckoos Nest and Notion are two of my favourite novels. Plus, it was Kesey’s Bus that gave this Substack its name. I mean, really - which Bus did you think you were riding?! Sources for today’s Stop include Ken Kesey (Britannica), Ken Kesey (Biography.com), Ken Kesey (Wikipedia), and Stevens, Jay. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. London: Paladin, 1987.

2. What Kesey and the other participants didn’t know at the time was that these experiments were actually being run by the CIA as part of its secret MK-ULTRA programme. For more about MK-ULTRA, see The Bus Issue 1.42.

3. Yes, Further is the original Bus.

4. In the US, LSD was legal until 24 October 1968.

5. For an excellent history of these years, see the Stevens book referenced in footnote one.

6. Both novels were made into films: Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), directed by Milôs Forman, won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson) and Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), and Notion (1970), starring and directed by Paul Newman, was nominated for two Oscars. In 1972, it was the first film shown on a new television network called HBO.

7. I really like this book - even more than Cuckoo. It reminds me a lot of Steinbeck’s East of Eden, though more modern (obviously).

8. I’m under no illusion that all was golden - many problems emerged as a result of these attitudes and behaviours, but I am convinced the original intentions were positive. Which is more than can be said about a lot of forces behind social changes.