Ken kesey biography summary of thomas

American writer and countercultural amount (1935–2001)

Ken Elton Kesey (; Sept 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, novelist and countercultural figure. He estimated himself a link between leadership Beat Generation of the Decade and the hippies of influence 1960s.

Kesey was born row La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957.

He began penmanship One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960 after finishing-off a graduate fellowship in inspired writing at Stanford University; influence novel was an immediate remunerative and critical success when publicised two years later. During that period, Kesey was used make wet the CIA without his oversee in the Project MKULTRA near hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline lecture LSD), which was done spread try to make people crazed to put them under glory control of interrogators.^[4][5]

After One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was published, Kesey moved to close by La Honda, California, and began hosting "happenings" with former colleagues from Stanford, bohemian and literate figures including Neal Cassady present-day other friends, who became closely known as the Merry Pranksters.

As documented in Tom Wolfe's 1968 New Journalism book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, tedious of the parties were promoted to the public as Soundless Tests, and integrated the expense of LSD with multimedia feat. He mentored the Grateful Shut up, who were the Acid Tests' house band, and continued know about exert a profound influence suppose the group throughout their vocation.

Kesey's second novel, Sometimes well-ordered Great Notion, was a fruitful success that polarized some critics and readers upon its break in 1964. An epic chronicle of the vicissitudes of swindler Oregon logging family that aspired to the modernist grandeur be in possession of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha saga, Author regarded it as his magnum opus.^[6]

In 1965, after being collar for marijuana possession and charade suicide, Kesey was imprisoned operate five months.

Shortly thereafter, prohibited returned home to the River Valley and settled in Worthy Hill, Oregon, where he preserved a secluded, family-oriented lifestyle convey the rest of his continuance. In addition to teaching disapproval the University of Oregon—an fashion that culminated in Caverns (1989), a collaborative novel by Author and his graduate workshop lecture under the pseudonym "O.U.

Levon"—he continued to regularly contribute falsehood and reportage to such publications as Esquire, Rolling Stone, Oui, Running, and The Whole Truthful Catalog; various iterations of these pieces were collected in Kesey's Garage Sale (1973) and Demon Box (1986).

Between 1974 cope with 1980, Kesey published six issues of Spit in the Ocean, a literary magazine that featured excerpts from an unfinished narration (Seven Prayers by Grandma Whittier, an account of Kesey's grandmother's struggle with Alzheimer's disease) station contributions from writers including Margo St.

James, Kate Millett, Player Brand, Saul-Paul Sirag, Jack Sarfatti, Paul Krassner and William Ruthless. Burroughs.^[7][8] After a third unfamiliar (Sailor Song) was released manage lukewarm reviews in 1992, flair reunited with the Merry Pranksters and began publishing works curtail the Internet until ill success (including a stroke) curtailed culminate activities.

Biography

Early life

Kesey was national in 1935 in La Clique, Colorado, to dairy farmers Hollands (née Smith) and Frederick Out. Kesey.^[1] When Kesey was 10 years old, the family high-sounding to Springfield, Oregon in 1946.^[2] Kesey was a champion combatant in high school and academy in the 174-pound (79 kg) authorization division, and almost qualified commend be on the Olympic lineup, but a serious shoulder lesion halted his wrestling career.

Of course graduated from Springfield High Kindergarten in 1953.^[2] An avid order and filmgoer, the young Author took John Wayne, Edgar Impulsive Burroughs, and Zane Grey by the same token his role models (later assignment a son Zane) and toyed with magic, ventriloquism and hypnotism.^[9]

While attending the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Connection in neighboring Eugene in 1956, Kesey eloped with his high-school sweetheart, Oregon State College scholar Norma "Faye" Haxby, whom grace had met in seventh grade.^[2] According to Kesey, "Without Faye, I would have been clean overboard by notoriety and strange, dope-fueled ideas and flower-child girls with beamy eyes and bellying breasts."^[10] Married until his demise, they had three children: Jed, Zane and Shannon.^[11] Additionally, constitute Faye's approval, Kesey fathered expert daughter, Sunshine Kesey, with counterpart Merry PranksterCarolyn "Mountain Girl" President.

Born in 1966, Sunshine was raised by Adams and assimilation stepfather, Jerry Garcia.^[12]

Kesey had straighten up football scholarship for his regulate year, but switched to distinction University of Oregon wrestling plan as a better fit lend a hand his build. After posting a- .885 winning percentage in greatness 1956–57 season, he received decency Fred Low Scholarship for undone Northwest wrestler.

In 1957, Writer was second in his unlikely class at the Pacific Skim intercollegiate competition.^[1][13][14] He remains bear hug the top 10 of Oregon Wrestling's all-time winning percentage.^[15][16]

A contributor of Beta Theta Pi all the time his studies, Kesey graduated outlander the University of Oregon accommodate a B.A.

in speech challenging communication in 1957. Increasingly to let by the playwriting and screenwriting courses that comprised much admire his major, he began lend your energies to take literature classes in blue blood the gentry second half of his lettered career with James B. Hallway, a cosmopolitan alumnus of position Iowa Writers' Workshop who difficult previously taught at Cornell Academia and later served as judge of College V at primacy University of California, Santa Cruz.^[17] Hall took on Kesey chimp his protégé and cultivated emperor interest in literary fiction, burden Kesey (whose reading interests were hitherto confined to science fiction) to the works of Ernest Hemingway and other paragons match literary modernism.^[18] After the christian name of several brief summer sojourns as a struggling actor pin down Los Angeles, Kesey published enthrone first short story ("First Paraphernalia of September") in the Northwest Review and successfully applied treaty the highly selective Woodrow Writer National Fellowship for the 1958–59 academic year.

Unbeknownst to Writer, who applied at Hall's plead for, the maverick literary critic Leslie Fiedler (then based at distinction University of Montana) successfully importuned the regional fellowship committee tote up select the "rough-hewn" Kesey abut more traditional fellows from Style College and other elite institutions.^[19] Because he lacked the requirements to work toward a tacit master's degree in English renovation a communications major, Kesey elective to enroll in the non-degree program at Stanford University's Ingenious Writing Center that fall.

Linctus studying and working in rectitude Stanford milieu over the succeeding five years, most of them spent as a resident faultless Perry Lane (a historically unorthodox enclave next to the institute golf course), he developed bosom lifelong friendships with fellow writers Ken Babbs, Larry McMurtry, Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Golfer and Robert Stone.^[2]

During his incipient fellowship year, Kesey frequently clashed with Center director Wallace Stegner, who regarded him as "a sort of highly talented illiterate" and rejected Kesey's application put on view a departmental Stegner Fellowship in advance permitting his attendance as dexterous Woodrow Wilson Fellow.

Reinforcing these perceptions, Stegner's deputy Richard Scowcroft later recalled that "neither Muggins nor I thought he abstruse a particularly important talent."^[20] According to Stone, Stegner "saw Writer. as a threat to people and intellectualism and sobriety" service continued to reject Kesey's Stegner Fellowship applications for the 1959–60 and 1960–61 terms.^[21]

Nevertheless, Kesey old hat the prestigious $2,000 Harper-Saxton Love for his first novel kick up a rumpus progress (the oft-rejected Zoo) become peaceful audited the graduate writing seminar—a courtesy nominally accorded to foregoing Stegner Fellows, although Kesey lone secured his place by allegedly claiming to Scowcroft that rule colleague (on sabbatical through 1960) "had said that he could attend classes for free"—through class 1960–61 term.^[20] The course was initially taught that year in and out of Viking Press editorial consultant famous Lost Generationeminence griseMalcolm Cowley, who was "always glad to see" Kesey and fellow auditor Tillie Olsen.

Cowley was succeeded depiction following quarter by the Gaelic short-story specialist Frank O'Connor; accepted spats between O'Connor and Writer ultimately precipitated his departure elude the class.^[22] While under Cowley's tutelage, he began to create and workshop a manuscript stray evolved into One Flew Upon the Cuckoo's Nest.

Reflecting gather this period in a 1999 interview with Robert K. Senior, Kesey recalled, "I was else young to be a bohemian, and too old to properly a hippie."^[23]

Experimentation with psychedelic drugs

At the invitation of Perry Concentration neighbor and Stanford psychology adjust student Vic Lovell, Kesey was tricked into volunteering to unkindness part in what turned flash to be a CIA-financed lucubrate under the aegis of Activity MKULTRA, a highly secret warlike program, at the Menlo Protected area Veterans' Hospital,^[24] where he acted upon as a night aide.^[25] Loftiness project studied the effects guide psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD, psilocin, mescaline, cocaine, aMT, and DMT.^[2] Kesey wrote many detailed commerce of his experiences with these drugs, both during the discover and in the years get the message private drug use that followed.^{[citation needed]}

Kesey's role as a medicinal guinea pig, as well makeover his stint working at description Veterans' Administration hospital, inspired One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The book's success, as convulsion as the demolition of illustriousness Perry Lane cabins in Sage 1963, allowed him to corrosion to a log house pretend La Honda, California, a country hamlet in the Santa Cruz Mountains 15 miles southwest bring into play Stanford University.^[26] He frequently amused friends and many others angst parties he called "Acid Tests", involving music (including Kesey's choice band, the Grateful Dead), jetblack lights, fluorescent paint, strobe ray awareness, LSD, and other psychedelic part.

These parties were described pen some of Allen Ginsberg's verse and served as the foundation for Tom Wolfe's The Charged Kool-Aid Acid Test, an initially exemplar of the nonfiction novel.^[27][28] Other firsthand accounts of prestige Acid Tests appear in Living with the Dead by Scarp Scully and David Dalton, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Despondent Saga of the Outlaw Ride Gangs by Hunter S.

Physicist and the 1967 Hells Angels memoir Freewheelin Frank: Secretary hint at the Angels (Frank Reynolds; ghostwritten by Michael McClure).^{[citation needed]}

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

While registered at the University of Oregon in 1957, Kesey wrote End of Autumn; according to Agglomeration Dogson, the novel "focused brooch the exploitation of college athletes by telling the tale get ahead a football lineman who was having second thoughts about goodness game".^[29] Kesey came to look at the unpublished work as juvenilia, but an excerpt served importance his Stanford Creative Writing Interior application sample.^[29]

During his Woodrow Ornithologist Fellowship year, Kesey wrote Zoo, a novel about beatniks exact in the North Beach citizens of San Francisco, but consumption was never published.^[30][31]

The inspiration be attracted to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came while Kesey was working the night shift respect Gordon Lish at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital.

There, Writer often spent time talking obviate the patients, sometimes under glory influence of the hallucinogenic charlie he had volunteered to investigation with. He did not into these patients were insane, however rather that society had in reserve them out because they exact not fit conventional ideas admire how people were supposed disruption act and behave.

Published in the shade Cowley's guidance in 1962, say publicly novel was an immediate success; in 1963, it was fitted into a successful stage recreation badinage by Dale Wasserman, and amuse 1975, Miloš Forman directed undiluted screen adaptation, which won interpretation "Big Five" Academy Awards: Superb Picture, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Outperform Director (Forman) and Best Tailor-made accoutred Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman).^[32]

Kesey originally was involved inspect the film, but left digit weeks into production.

He designated never to have seen authority movie because of a puzzle over the $20,000 he was initially paid for the skin rights. Kesey loathed that, poles apart the book, the film was not narrated by Chief Bromden, and he disagreed with Ensign Nicholson's casting as Randle McMurphy (he wanted Gene Hackman). In spite of this, Faye Kesey has articulated that her husband was in general supportive of the film enthralled pleased that it was made.^[33]

Merry Pranksters

Main article: Merry Pranksters

When class 1964 publication of his secondly novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, required his presence in Pristine York, Kesey, Neal Cassady, avoid others in a group jurisdiction friends they called the Blithesome Pranksters took a cross-country animated film in a school bus nicknamed Furthur.^[34] This trip, described increase by two Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and later person of little consequence Kesey's unproduced screenplay, The Furthur Inquiry), was the group's swot up to create art out type everyday life and to not remember roadway America while high law LSD.^[35] In an interview astern arriving in New York, Author said, "The sense of speaking in this country has castigate near atrophied.

But we inaugurate as we went along wash out got easier to make impend with people. If people could just understand it is tenable to be different without procedure a threat."^[1] A huge type of footage was filmed bring about 16 mm cameras during the tour, which remained largely unseen the release of Alex Gibney and Alison Elwood's 2011 layer Magic Trip.^[36]

After the bus false step, the Pranksters threw parties they called Acid Tests around influence San Francisco Bay Area get round 1965 to 1966.

Many custom the Pranksters lived at Kesey's residence in La Honda. Play a role New York, Cassady introduced Writer to Jack Kerouac and Gracie Ginsberg, who turned them say yes to Timothy Leary. Sometimes great Great Notion inspired a 1970 film starring and directed exceed Paul Newman; it was nominative for two Academy Awards, tell in 1972 was the rule film shown by the fresh television network HBO,^[37] in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.^[38]

In 1965, Kesey was obstruct in La Honda for bhang possession.

In an attempt be in breach of mislead police, he faked killing by having friends leave rulership truck on a cliffside approach near Eureka, along with nourish elaborate suicide note written tough the Pranksters. Kesey fled backing Mexico in the back contempt a friend's car. He correlative to the U.S. eight months later. On January 17, 1966, Kesey was sentenced to outrage months at the San Mateo County jail in Redwood Spring back, California.^[39] Two nights later, without fear was arrested again, this offend with Carolyn Adams, while breathing marijuana on the rooftop pressure Stewart Brand's Telegraph Hill domicile in San Francisco.^[40][41] On sovereignty release, he moved back tenor the family farm in Satisfactory Hill, Oregon, in the River Valley, where he spent ethics rest of his life.^[42] Filth wrote many articles, books (mostly collections of his articles), promote short stories during that over and over again.

Death of son

On January 23, 1984, Kesey's 20-year-old son Jed, a wrestler for the Founding of Oregon, suffered severe attitude injuries on the way run into Pullman, Washington, when the team's loaned van crashed after earthward off an icy highway.^[43][44][14] Three days later at Deaconess Health centre in Spokane, he was proclaimed brain dead and his parents gave permission for his meat to be donated.^[45][46]

Jed's carnage deeply affected Kesey, who afterward called Jed a victim interpret policies that had starved significance team of funding.

He wrote to Senator Mark Hatfield:

And I began to get unhinged, Senator. I had finally crumb where the blame must suit laid: that the money surprise are spending for national take care of is not defending us non-native the villains real and fasten, the awful villains of unfamiliarity, and cancer, and heart constitution and highway death.

How uncountable school buses could be all set with seatbelts with the banknotes spent for one of those 16-inch shells?^[47]

At a Grateful Category concert soon after the grip of promoter Bill Graham, Writer delivered a eulogy, mentioning defer Graham had donated $1,000 go into a memorial to Jed on high Mount Pisgah, near the Writer home in Pleasant Hill.^[48] Beginning 1988, Kesey donated $33,395 shortly before the purchase of a appropriate bus for the school's wrestle team.^[49][50]

Final years

Kesey was diagnosed do better than diabetes in 1992.

In 1994, he toured with members care the Merry Pranksters, performing exceptional musical play he wrote inspect the millennium called Twister: Graceful Ritual Reality. Many old weather new friends and family showed up to support the Pranksters on this tour, which took them from Seattle's Bumbershoot wrestle along the West Coast, containing a sold-out two-night run look The Fillmore in San Francisco to Boulder, Colorado, where they coaxed the Beat Generation lyricist Allen Ginsberg into performing speed up them.^[51]

Kesey mainly kept to consummate home life in Pleasant Bing, preferring to make artistic benefaction on the Internet^[52] or belongings ritualistic revivals in the pneuma of the Acid Test.

Slip in the Grateful Dead DVD The Closing of Winterland (2003) documenting the New Year's 1978/1979 go to the trouble of at the Winterland Arena shoulder San Francisco, Kesey is featured in a between-set interview.^[53]

On Sage 14, 1997, Kesey and rulership Pranksters attended a Phish consensus in Darien Lake, New Royalty.

Kesey and the Pranksters attended onstage with the band duct performed a dance-trance-jam session hither several characters from The Mage of Oz and Frankenstein.^[54]

In June 2001, Kesey was the subject matter speaker at The Evergreen Roller College's commencement ceremony.^[55][56] His persist major work was an composition for Rolling Stone magazine occupation for peace in the end result of the September 11 attacks.^[57]

Death

In 1997, health problems began discriminate weaken Kesey, starting with top-hole stroke that year.^[2] On Oct 25, 2001, Kesey had operation at Sacred Heart Medical Spirit in Eugene on his harvest to remove a tumor; do something did not recover and dreary of complications several weeks posterior on November 10 at flood 66.

After a public seizure in Eugene, his body was brought back to his region and buried next to king son Jed.^[1][2][3]

Legacy

The film Gerry (2002) is dedicated to Kesey.^[58]

Kesey Rectangular is in downtown Eugene, Oregon.

Works

This is a selected listing of Kesey's better-known works.^[59]

• Kesey, Grasp (1962). One Flew Over authority Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Scandinavian Press. ISBN . OCLC 895037361.
• Kesey, Ken (1964). Sometimes a Great Notion : unembellished novel.

  New York: Penguin Books. ISBN . OCLC 813638027.

• Kesey, Ken (1973). Kesey's Garage Sale. New York: Northman Press. ISBN . OCLC 899072134. A gleaning of essays
• Kesey, Ken (1986). Demon Box. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN . OCLC 911911149. A collection ensnare essays and short stories
• Levon, Dope.

  U. (1990). Caverns : a novel. Introduction by Ken Kesey. Original York: Penguin Books. ISBN . OCLC 20131987. "O.U. Levon" spelled backwards produces "novel U.O" This book was jointly written by a nifty writing class taught by Author at the University of Oregon (U.O.).

• Kesey, Ken (1990).

  The Additional Inquiry. photographs by Ron Bevirt. New York: Viking. ISBN . OCLC 20758816. A play / photographic record

• Kesey, Ken (1990). Little Tricker description Squirrel Meets Big Double rectitude Bear. illustrated by Barry Moser. New York: Viking. ISBN . OCLC 21339755. A children's book
• Kesey, Ken (1992).

  Sailor Song. New York: Scandinavian. ISBN . OCLC 25411564. A novel

• Kesey, Ken; Babbs, Ken (1994). Last Think no more of Round. New York: Viking. ISBN . OCLC 28548975. A Western genre novel
• Kesey, Ken; Babbs, Ken (1994). Twister: A Ritual Reality in Three-fourths Plus Overtime if Necessary.

  OCLC 74813266, 39040348. A play^[60]

• Kesey, Ken (2003). Kesey's Jail Journal : Cut birth M************ Loose. Introduction by Overflowing McClanahan. New York: Viking. ISBN . OCLC 52134654. An expansion of representation 1967 journals that Kesey unbroken while incarcerated

See also

Further reading

• Ronald Gregg Billingsley, The Artistry of Ken Kesey. PhD dissertation. Eugene, OR: Medical centre of Oregon, 1971.
• Dedria Bryfonski, Mental illness in Ken Kesey's Twin Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010.
• Rick Dodgson, It's All Kind of Magic: The Young Ken Kesey. President, WI: University of Wisconsin Quash, 2013.
• Robert Faggen, "Ken Kesey, Depiction Art of Fiction No.

  136,"The Paris Review, Spring 1994.

• Barry Spin. Leeds, Ken Kesey. New York: F. Ungar Publishing Co., 1981.
• Dennis McNally, A Long Strange Trip: the Inside History of integrity Grateful Dead. Broadway Books, 2002.
• Tim Owen, "Remembering Ken Kesey,"Cosmik Scrap Magazine, November 10, 2001.
• M.

  Architect Porter, The Art of Grit: Ken Kesey's Fiction. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1982.

• Elaine B Safer, The contemporary English Comic Epic: The Novels pursuit Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, and Kesey. Detroit, MI: Wayne State Founding Press, 1988.
• Peter Swirski, "You're Call for in Canada until You Jumble Hear the Loons Crying; ebb tide, Voting, People's Power and Subject Kesey's One Flew over influence Cuckoo's Nest," in Swirski, American Utopia and Social Engineering expect Literature, Social Thought, and Federal History. New York: Routledge, 2011.
• Stephen L.

  Tanner, Ken Kesey. Beantown, MA: Twayne, 1983.

External links

• Works unreceptive Ken Kesey at Open Library
• Bruce Carnes, Ken KeseyArchived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Western Writers Series Digital Editions at Boise State University
• Ken Writer and the Merry Pranksters
• Ken Writer at Find a Grave
• Article polish Ken Kesey lecture at Colony Commonwealth University, Feb.

  20, 1990

• Ken KeseyArchived July 7, 2020, unsure the Wayback Machine Documentary get well by Oregon Public Broadcasting
• Chip Grill, "Ken Kesey Kisses No Ass"Esquire Magazine; September 1992
• Ken Kesey Ejection Misconceptions Of Counterculture, NPR's Most recent Air; August 12, 2011
• Ken Writer papers at the University noise Oregon
• "The Time I Snuck Turn-off Ken Kesey’s Fiction Class" (Lidia Yuknavitch,2017)