Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey
BornKen Elton Kesey
(1935-09-17)September 17, 1935
La Junta, Colorado, U.S.
DiedNovember 10, 2001(2001-11-10) (aged 66)
Eugene, Oregon, U.S.[1][2][3]
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • short story writer
  • essayist
  • poet
Alma materUniversity of Oregon
GenrePostmodernism
Literary movementCountercultural
Notable worksOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)
Sometimes a Great Notion (1964)

Ken Elton Kesey (/ˈkiːziː/; September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.

Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960 after completing a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later. During this period, Kesey participated in CIA-financed studies involving hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline and LSD) to supplement his income.[4]

After One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was published, Kesey moved to nearby La Honda, California, and began hosting "happenings" with former colleagues from Stanford, bohemian and literary figures including Neal Cassady and other friends, who became collectively known as the Merry Pranksters. As documented in Tom Wolfe's 1968 New Journalism book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, some of the parties were promoted to the public as Acid Tests, and integrated the consumption of LSD with multimedia performances. He mentored the Grateful Dead, who were the Acid Tests' house band, and continued to exert a profound influence upon the group throughout their career.

Kesey's second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, was a commercial success that polarized some critics and readers upon its release in 1964. An epic account of the vicissitudes of an Oregon logging family that aspired to the modernist grandeur of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha saga, Kesey regarded it as his magnum opus.[5]

In 1965, after being arrested for marijuana possession and faking suicide, Kesey was imprisoned for five months. Shortly thereafter, he returned home to the Willamette Valley and settled in Pleasant Hill, Oregon, where he maintained a secluded, family-oriented lifestyle for the rest of his life. In addition to teaching at the University of Oregon—an experience that culminated in Caverns (1989), a collaborative novel by Kesey and his graduate workshop students under the pseudonym "O.U. Levon"—he continued to regularly contribute fiction and reportage to such publications as Esquire, Rolling Stone, Oui, Running, and The Whole Earth Catalog; various iterations of these pieces were collected in Kesey's Garage Sale (1973) and Demon Box (1986).

Between 1974 and 1980, Kesey published six issues of Spit in the Ocean, a literary magazine that featured excerpts from an unfinished novel (Seven Prayers by Grandma Whittier, an account of Kesey's grandmother's struggle with Alzheimer's disease) and contributions from writers including Margo St. James, Kate Millett, Stewart Brand, Saul-Paul Sirag, Jack Sarfatti, Paul Krassner and William S. Burroughs.[6][7] After a third novel (Sailor Song) was released to lukewarm reviews in 1992, he reunited with the Merry Pranksters and began publishing works on the Internet until ill health (including a stroke) curtailed his activities.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTobit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference oregonianobit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Keefer, Bob; Palmer, Susan (November 11, 2001). "Oregon loses a legend". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). p. 1A.
  4. ^ Ken, Kesey (1962). One flew over the cuckoo's nest : a novel. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-451-16396-7. OCLC 189375.
  5. ^ "Stanford Magazine –Article". Retrieved March 6, 2017.
  6. ^ Faggen, Robert (1994). "Ken Kesey, The Art of Fiction No. 136". The Paris Review. No. 130 (Spring ed.). Retrieved November 22, 2021.
  7. ^ "Grateful Dead Family Discography: Spit in the Ocean Bibliography". Retrieved March 6, 2017.