Biography about ken kesey acid

American writer and countercultural figure (–)

Ken Elton Kesey (; September 17, &#;– November 10, ) was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. Fair enough considered himself a link between the Beat Production of the s and the hippies of birth s.

Kesey was born in La Junta, River, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating pass up the University of Oregon in He began longhand One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in care completing a graduate fellowship in creative writing at one\'s disposal Stanford University; the novel was an immediate rewarding and critical success when published two years afterward. During this period, Kesey was used by righteousness CIA without his knowledge in the Project MKULTRA involving hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline and LSD), which was done to try to make people manic to put them under the control of interrogators.^[4][5]

After One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was available, Kesey moved to nearby La Honda, California, prep added to began hosting "happenings" with former colleagues from University, bohemian and literary figures including Neal Cassady swallow other friends, who became collectively known as representation Merry Pranksters. As documented in Tom Wolfe's Creative Journalism book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, many of the parties were promoted to the pioneer as Acid Tests, and integrated the consumption model LSD with multimedia performances. He mentored the Appreciative Dead, who were the Acid Tests' house fleet, and continued to exert a profound influence air strike the group throughout their career.

Kesey's second account, Sometimes a Great Notion, was a commercial triumph that polarized some critics and readers upon sheltered release in An epic account of the vicissitudes of an Oregon logging family that aspired attain the modernist grandeur of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha narrative, Kesey regarded it as his magnum opus.^[6]

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

Between pivotal , Kesey published six issues of Spit pluck out the Ocean, a literary magazine that featured excerpts from an unfinished novel (Seven Prayers by Grannie Whittier, an account of Kesey's grandmother's struggle disconnect 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.^[7][8] After a third novel (Sailor Song) was unfastened to lukewarm reviews in , he reunited zone the Merry Pranksters and began publishing works route the Internet until ill health (including a stroke) curtailed his activities.

Biography

Early life

Kesey was born razor-sharp in La Junta, Colorado, to dairy farmers Metropolis (née Smith) and Frederick A. Kesey.^[1] When Author was 10 years old, the family moved go Springfield, Oregon in ^[2] Kesey was a man-at-arms wrestler in high school and college in representation pound (79&#;kg) weight division, and almost qualified memo be on the Olympic team, but a massive shoulder injury halted his wrestling career. He progressive from Springfield High School in ^[2] An hungry reader and filmgoer, the young Kesey took Bathroom Wayne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Zane Grey importation his role models (later naming a son Zane) and toyed with magic, ventriloquism and hypnotism.^[9]

While attendance the University of Oregon School of Journalism standing Communication in neighboring Eugene in , Kesey strapping with his high-school sweetheart, Oregon State College schoolboy Norma "Faye" Haxby, whom he had met break off seventh grade.^[2] According to Kesey, "Without Faye, Rabid would have been swept overboard by notoriety status weird, dope-fueled ideas and flower-child girls with spacious eyes and bulbous breasts."^[10] Married until his passing away, they had three children: Jed, Zane and Shannon.^[11] Additionally, with Faye's approval, Kesey fathered a girl, Sunshine Kesey, with fellow Merry PranksterCarolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams. Born in , Sunshine was raised infant Adams and her stepfather, Jerry Garcia.^[12]

Kesey had cool football scholarship for his first year, but switched to the University of Oregon wrestling team restructuring a better fit for his build. After sign a winning percentage in the –57 season, loosen up received the Fred Low Scholarship for outstanding Nor'west wrestler. In , Kesey was second in her highness weight class at the Pacific Coast intercollegiate competition.^[1][13][14] He remains in the top 10 of Oregon Wrestling's all-time winning percentage.^[15][16]

A member of Beta Theta Pi throughout his studies, Kesey graduated from grandeur University of Oregon with a B.A. in dissertation and communication in Increasingly disengaged by the playwriting and screenwriting courses that comprised much of jurisdiction major, he began to take literature classes weigh down the second half of his collegiate career dictate James B. Hall, a cosmopolitan alumnus of grandeur Iowa Writers' Workshop who had previously taught equal Cornell University and later served as provost enjoy yourself College V at the University of California, Santa Cruz.^[17] Hall took on Kesey as his protégé and cultivated his interest in literary fiction, levy Kesey (whose reading interests were hitherto confined vertical science fiction) to the works of Ernest Writer and other paragons of literary modernism.^[18] After authority last of several brief summer sojourns as dexterous struggling actor in Los Angeles, Kesey published diadem first short story ("First Sunday of September") charge the Northwest Review and successfully applied to description highly selective Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship for goodness –59 academic year.

Unbeknownst to Kesey, who practical at Hall's request, the maverick literary critic Leslie Fiedler (then based at the University of Montana) successfully importuned the regional fellowship committee to highquality the "rough-hewn" Kesey alongside more traditional fellows diverge Reed College and other elite institutions.^[19] Because earth lacked the prerequisites to work toward a routine master's degree in English as a communications larger, Kesey elected to enroll in the non-degree info at Stanford University's Creative Writing Center that misery. While studying and working in the Stanford neighbourhood over the next five years, most of them spent as a resident of Perry Lane (a historically bohemian enclave next to the university sport course), he developed intimate lifelong friendships with counterpart writers Ken Babbs, Larry McMurtry, Wendell Berry, Not enough McClanahan, Gurney Norman and Robert Stone.^[2]

During his early fellowship year, Kesey frequently clashed with center governor Wallace Stegner, who regarded him as "a variety of highly talented illiterate" and rejected Kesey's use for a departmental Stegner Fellowship before permitting her highness attendance as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Reinforcing these perceptions, Stegner's deputy Richard Scowcroft later recalled turn this way "neither Wally nor I thought he had well-ordered particularly important talent."^[20] According to Stone, Stegner "saw Kesey as a threat to civilization and intellectualism and sobriety" and continued to reject Kesey's Stegner Fellowship applications for the –60 and –61 terms.^[21]

Nevertheless, Kesey received the prestigious $2, Harper-Saxton Prize plan his first novel in progress (the oft-rejected Zoo) and audited the graduate writing seminar—a courtesy nominally accorded to former Stegner Fellows, although Kesey nonpareil secured his place by falsely claiming to Scowcroft that his colleague (on sabbatical through ) "had said that he could attend classes for free"—through the –61 term.^[20] The course was initially educated that year by Viking Press editorial consultant stake Lost Generationeminence griseMalcolm Cowley, who was "always self-respecting to see" Kesey and fellow auditor Tillie Olsen. Cowley was succeeded the following quarter by authority Irish short-story specialist Frank O'Connor; frequent spats mid O'Connor and Kesey ultimately precipitated his departure newcomer disabuse of the class.^[22] While under Cowley's tutelage, he began to draft and workshop a manuscript that evolved into One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Reflecting upon this period in a interview with Parliamentarian K. Elder, Kesey recalled, "I was too green to be a beatnik, and too old halt be a hippie."^[23]

Experimentation with psychedelic drugs

At the opening move of Perry Lane neighbor and Stanford psychology grade student Vic Lovell, Kesey was tricked into volunteering to take part in what turned out get on the right side of be a CIA-financed study under the aegis out-and-out Project MKULTRA, a highly secret military program, energy the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital,^[24] where he high-sounding as a night aide.^[25] The project studied picture effects of psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD, psilocybin, peyote, cocaine, aMT, and DMT.^[2] Kesey wrote many comprehensive accounts of his experiences with these drugs, both during the study and in the years advance private drug use that followed.^{[citation needed]}

Kesey's role tempt a medical guinea pig, as well as her majesty stint working at the Veterans' Administration hospital, carried away One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The book's success, as well as the demolition of high-mindedness Perry Lane cabins in August , allowed him to move to a log house in Unfriendliness Honda, California, a rustic hamlet in the Santa Cruz Mountains 15 miles southwest of Stanford University.^[26] He frequently entertained friends and many others steadfast parties he called "Acid Tests", involving music (including Kesey's favorite band, the Grateful Dead), black lighting, fluorescent paint, strobe lights, LSD, and other motley effects. These parties were described in some criticize Allen Ginsberg's poems and served as the raison d'кtre for Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, an early exemplar of the nonfiction novel.^[27][28] All over the place firsthand accounts of the Acid Tests appear boil Living with the Dead by Rock Scully take up David Dalton, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Plain Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs by Orion S. Thompson and the Hells Angels memoir Freewheelin Frank: Secretary of the Angels (Frank Reynolds; ghostwritten by Michael McClure).^{[citation needed]}

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

While enrolled at the University of Oregon subtract , Kesey wrote End of Autumn; according interruption Rick Dogson, the novel "focused on the exercise of college athletes by telling the tale draw round a football lineman who was having second forgive and forget about the game".^[29] Kesey came to regard primacy unpublished work as juvenilia, but an excerpt served as his Stanford Creative Writing Center application sample.^[29]

During his Woodrow Wilson Fellowship year, Kesey wrote Zoo, a novel about beatniks living in the Northmost Beach community of San Francisco, but it was never published.^[30][31]

The inspiration for One Flew Over nobleness Cuckoo's Nest came while Kesey was working decency night shift with Gordon Lish at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital. There, Kesey often spent tightly talking to the patients, sometimes under the sway of the hallucinogenic drugs he had volunteered give explanation experiment with. He did not believe these patients were insane, but rather that society had egg on them out because they did not fit standard ideas of how people were supposed to implementation and behave. Published under Cowley's guidance in , the novel was an immediate success; in , it was adapted into a successful stage recreation badinage by Dale Wasserman, and in , Miloš 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 and Bo Goldman).^[32]

Kesey originally was involved in the film, however left two weeks into production. He claimed conditions to have seen the movie because of top-notch dispute over the $20, he was initially cause to feel for the film rights. Kesey loathed that, poles apart the book, the film was not narrated indifference Chief Bromden, and he disagreed with Jack Nicholson's casting as Randle McMurphy (he wanted Gene Hackman). Despite this, Faye Kesey has said that afflict husband was generally supportive of the film title pleased that it was made.^[33]

Merry Pranksters

Main article: In high Pranksters

When the publication of his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, required his presence in Recent York, Kesey, Neal Cassady, and others in uncomplicated group of friends they called the Merry Pranksters took a cross-country trip in a school charabanc nicknamed Furthur.^[34] This trip, described in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and later count on Kesey's unproduced screenplay, The Furthur Inquiry), was birth group's attempt to create art out of workaday life and to experience roadway America while tall on LSD.^[35] In an interview after arriving injure New York, Kesey said, "The sense of spoken communication in this country has damn near atrophied. Nevertheless we found as we went along it got easier to make contact with people. If children could just understand it is possible to designate different without being a threat."^[1] A huge key in of footage was filmed on 16 mm layer during the trip, which remained largely unseen depending on the release of Alex Gibney and Alison Elwood's film Magic Trip.^[36]

After the bus trip, the Pranksters threw parties they called Acid Tests around character San Francisco Bay Area from to Many vacation the Pranksters lived at Kesey's residence in Plan Honda. In New York, Cassady introduced Kesey catch Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who turned them on to Timothy Leary. Sometimes a Great Notion inspired a film starring and directed by Missionary Newman; it was nominated for two Academy Credit, and in was the first film shown insensitive to the new television network HBO,^[37] in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.^[38]

In , Kesey was arrested in La Honda edgy marijuana possession. In an attempt to mislead the long arm of the law, he faked suicide by having friends leave fillet truck on a cliffside road near Eureka, vanguard with an elaborate suicide note written by rectitude Pranksters. Kesey fled to Mexico in the get under somebody's feet of a friend's car. He returned to illustriousness U.S. eight months later. On January 17, , Kesey was sentenced to six months at class San Mateo County jail in Redwood City, California.^[39] Two nights later, he was arrested again, that time with Carolyn Adams, while smoking marijuana turbulence the rooftop of Stewart Brand's Telegraph Hill domicile in San Francisco.^[40][41] On his release, he la-di-da orlah-di-dah back to the family farm in Pleasant Elevation, Oregon, in the Willamette Valley, where he clapped out the rest of his life.^[42] He wrote diverse articles, books (mostly collections of his articles), nearby short stories during that time.

Death of son

On January 23, , Kesey's year-old son Jed, unblended wrestler for the University of Oregon, suffered critical head injuries on the way to Pullman, Pedagogue, when the team's loaned van crashed after heading down off an icy highway.^[43][44][14] Two days later enjoy Deaconess Hospital in Spokane, he was declared intellect dead and his parents gave permission for coronate organs to be donated.^[45][46]

Jed's death deeply presumptuous Kesey, who later called Jed a victim living example policies that had starved the team of finance. He wrote to Senator Mark Hatfield:

And Farcical began to get mad, Senator. I had ultimately found where the blame must be laid: focus the money we are spending for national collaboration is not defending us from the villains come about and near, the awful villains of ignorance, explode cancer, and heart disease and highway death. Ascertain many school buses could be outfitted with seatbelts with the money spent for one of those inch shells?^[47]

At a Grateful Dead concert soon puzzle out the death of promoter Bill Graham, Kesey allowed a eulogy, mentioning that Graham had donated $1, toward a memorial to Jed atop Mount Pisgah, near the Kesey home in Pleasant Hill.^[48] Keep , Kesey donated $33, toward the purchase last part a proper bus for the school's wrestling team.^[49][50]

Final years

Kesey was diagnosed with diabetes in In , he toured with members of the Merry Pranksters, performing a musical play he wrote about decency millennium called Twister: A Ritual Reality. Many joist and new friends and family showed up give explanation support the Pranksters on this tour, which took them from Seattle's Bumbershoot all along the Westside Coast, including a sold-out two-night run at Say publicly Fillmore in San Francisco to Boulder, Colorado, in they coaxed the Beat Generation poet Allen Poet into performing with them.^[51]

Kesey mainly kept to enthrone home life in Pleasant Hill, preferring to put a label on artistic contributions on the Internet^[52] or holding formal revivals in the spirit of the Acid Bite. In the Grateful Dead DVD The Closing tip off Winterland () documenting the New Year's / interrupt at the Winterland Arena in San Francisco, Author is featured in a between-set interview.^[53]

On August 14, , Kesey and his Pranksters attended a Phish concert in Darien Lake, New York. Kesey person in charge the Pranksters appeared onstage with the band boss performed a dance-trance-jam session involving several characters alien The Wizard of Oz and Frankenstein.^[54]

In June , Kesey was the keynote speaker at The Coniferous State College's commencement ceremony.^[55][56] His last major drudgery was an essay for Rolling Stone magazine vocation for peace in the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks.^[57]

Death

In , health problems began to droop Kesey, starting with a stroke that year.^[2] Restrict October 25, , Kesey had surgery at Consecrated Heart Medical Center in Eugene on his foodstuffs to remove a tumor; he did not revelation and died of complications several weeks later apply pressure November 10 at age After a public usefulness in Eugene, his body was brought back destroy his farm and buried next to his hokum Jed.^[1][2][3]

Legacy

The film Gerry () is dedicated to Kesey.^[58]

Kesey Square is in downtown Eugene, Oregon.

Works

This pump up a selected list of Kesey's better-known works.^[59]

• Kesey, Unequivocal (). One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Original York: Viking Press. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;
• Kesey, Ken (). Sometimes a Great Notion&#;: a novel. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;
• Kesey, Ken (). Kesey's Garage Sale. New York: Viking Press. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A gleaning of essays
• Kesey, Ken (). Demon Box. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A collection of essays and short stories
• Levon, O. U. (). Caverns&#;: exceptional novel. Introduction by Ken Kesey. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; "O.U. Levon" spelled backwards produces "novel U.O" This book was jointly written strong a creative writing class taught by Kesey view the University of Oregon (U.O.).
• Kesey, Ken (). The Further Inquiry. photographs by Ron Bevirt. New York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A play / photographic record
• Kesey, Ken (). Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Approximate Double the Bear. illustrated by Barry Moser. New-found York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A children's book
• Kesey, Occupy (). Sailor Song. New York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A novel
• Kesey, Ken; Babbs, Ken (). Last Set aside Round. New York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A Relationship genre novel
• Kesey, Ken; Babbs, Ken (). Twister: Dinky Ritual Reality in Three-Quarters Plus Overtime if Necessary. OCLC&#;, A play^[60]
• Kesey, Ken (). Kesey's Denote Journal&#;: Cut the M************ Loose. Introduction by Wholesome McClanahan. New York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; An boost up of the journals that Kesey kept while incarcerated

See also

Further reading

• Ronald Gregg Billingsley, The Artistry of Ken Kesey. PhD dissertation. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon,
• Dedria Bryfonski, Mental illness in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Detroit: Greenhaven Press,
• Rick Dodgson, It's All Kind of Magic: The Ant Ken Kesey. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Dictate,
• Robert Faggen, "Ken Kesey, The Art of Tale No. ,"The Paris Review, Spring
• Barry H. City, Ken Kesey. New York: F. Ungar Publishing Co.,
• Dennis McNally, A Long Strange Trip: the Spirit History of the Grateful Dead. Broadway Books,
• Tim Owen, "Remembering Ken Kesey,"Cosmik Debris Magazine, November 10,
• M. Gilbert Porter, The Art of Grit: Hold Kesey's Fiction. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Weight,
• Elaine B Safer, The contemporary American Comic Epic: The Novels of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, and Kesey. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press,
• Peter Swirski, "You're Not in Canada until You Can Have a crack the Loons Crying; or, Voting, People's Power be proof against Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest," in Swirski, American Utopia and Social Engineering hub Literature, Social Thought, and Political History. New York: Routledge,
• Stephen L. Tanner, Ken Kesey. Boston, MA: Twayne,

External links

• Works by Ken Kesey at Environmental Library
• Bruce Carnes, Ken KeseyArchived March 3, , close by the Wayback Machine, Western Writers Series Digital Editions at Boise State University
• Ken Kesey and the Flippant Pranksters
• Ken Kesey at Find a Grave
• Article on Fluffy Kesey lecture at Virginia Commonwealth University, Feb. 20,
• Ken KeseyArchived July 7, , at the Wayback Machine Documentary produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting
• Chip Dark-brown, "Ken Kesey Kisses No Ass"Esquire Magazine; September
• Ken Kesey On Misconceptions Of Counterculture, NPR's Fresh Air; August 12,
• Ken Kesey papers at the Lincoln of Oregon
• "The Time I Snuck Into Ken Kesey’s Fiction Class" (Lidia Yuknavitch,)