“Spit In The Ocean #7 – All about Kesey” is an eclectic collection of real tales about legendary Oregon writer Ken Kesey.
Kesey is best known for writing “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” (mental institutions) and “Sometimes A Great Notion” (an Oregon logging family). Both books were actually written in California, and both are much more involved than my simple description. “Spit #7” is the final version of a literary magazine that Kesey pioneered.
In “Spit In the Ocean #7”, lots of famous authors and Pranksters relate pieces of adventures they had with Kesey, who died in 2001. Included are Larry McMurtury (“Lonesome Dove”, among others), Hunter S Thompson, Robert Stone and Tom Wolfe. This book is edited by Ed McClanahan (with commentary). Lots of guest appearances.
“Spit” really puts a personal touch on the Kesey quasi-biography written by Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). One of the all-time funniest things written was by Hunter S. Thompson, who introduced Kesey to The Hell’s Angels, who rode up and partied at Kesey’s cabin in La Honda, California: “I happened to have a foot in both camps, and what I did basically was act as a social director mixing a little Hell’s Angel with a little Prankster to see what you come up with- for fun of course.. My control ran out early on. To the credit of Kesey and the Pranksters, they were too crazy to be scared… I told Kesey that he would deserve to be shot as a war criminal if he went through with this. ..What the fuck have I wrought out here?”.
There are also very funny and touching remembrances by Kesey’s lifelong friend, Ken Babbs and many others. Lots and lots of pictures of Kesey and friends also.
This is the book to read if you want to fill in the pieces of Ken Kesey’s life, and the lives he touched.
Kesey was both way ahead and way behind the times. He could have scrapped it out in any era.
“Spit In The Ocean #7” is a great read, filled with wild, crazy and interesting tales by wild, crazy and interesting people. I highly recommend it.
-John Titus
Review: “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”
Let me begin by saying that “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, by Tom Wolfe is more than a book about acid and similar experiences. It is more than a book about Oregon author the late Ken Kesey and The Pranksters. It is about what it was to grow up in the 1960’s, what the revolutionary spirit was about and how the American population changed during that time. I feel that by reading about Kesey and the Pranksters, I understand a lot more about that time, and I am a product of the 1950’s.
Kesey was a great west-coast writer, who penned “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, and “Sometimes A Great Notion”. “Cukoo” related to his experience working in a mental ward (and stealing lots of psycho-active drugs), and “Notion” was about something Kesey knew well about; a family of Oregon Loggers. I have had that experience also. In fact, my best friend was room-mate to a Kesey boy (name not mentioned here) and one night we laid on the floor in that room and chewed bees-wax, drank lots of beer and smoked lots of pot. We stared at the ceiling, which was painted with glowing star patterns, listening to music. Not long before, we had lived deep in the woods of the Oregon Coast Range.
Kesey, and “The Merry Pranksters”, led an experimental traveling troupe across the country in an old school bus named “Further”. I think now I understand what Kesey was trying to achieve; a somewhat dis-associative state that Zen Monks and others have tried to achieve also. However, Kesey’s method differed from the Ivy-League trippers like Timothy Leary, who tried to catalog their drug experiences like science experiments. It appears Kesey saw this (dis-associative state) when he and the Pranksters attended a Beatles concert, and Kesey saw how the band had the crowd in their hands, but essentially did nothing about it at the time.
Kesey entranced not only the Hell’s Angels (Wolfe writes: “The Angels didn’t know what permissive was until they got to Kesey’s”), but the Unitarian Church of California and others. He had a novelist’s money and a team of lawyers behind him, but Ken Kesey led a charmed life either way. Kesey’s father “Fred Kesey, started him and his younger brother.. shooting and fishing and swimming as early as they could in any way manage it.. also boxing, running, wrestling, plunging down the rapids of the Willmette and McKenzie Rivers..”
My all-time favorite descriptions in this book include:
(Ken Kesey when the Hell’s Angels come to party at his La Honda cabin-) “Kesey was the magnet and the strength, the man in both worlds. The Angels respected him and they weren’t about to screw him around. He was one of the coolest guys they had ever come across.” And, at an anti-Vietnam War rally:
“Kesey leans into the microphone- “There’s only one thing to do… there’s only one thing’s gonna do any good at all… And that’s everybody just look at it, look at the war, and turn your backs and say… Fuck it…” (Organizers were pissed).
As far as the book itself, author Tom Wolfe begins by riding along with the group, and lays out a very detailed description of the events that followed. Once Kesey escapes to Mexico, fleeing a drug charge, Wolfe’s writing style turns more “Hunter-Thompson-esque” and “Gonzo”, no doubt he was also deep in “The Pudding”.
At just over 400 pages, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” is a pretty darned good showing of the 1960’s, The Pranksters, the magic bus ride, the Hell’s Angels, Grateful Dead, and others.
It was a great recharge of ’60’s energy for me!
-John Titus
Official Kesey website: http://key-z.com/
