Word: kesey
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION by Ken Kesey. 628 pages. Viking...
...good man is hard to find, and intolerable to men and gods once he is found. The age of the anti-hero tends to overlook this fascinating half-truth, which is the durable paradox at the core of Oedipus Rex and Othello. But Ken Kesey used it well in his short, cruelly focused first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. McMurphy, laughing con man and indestructible alley fighter, cons his way into an insane asylum to escape the drudgery of a prison farm. His battle is with Big Nurse, the white-starched emasculator who bulls his ward...
...Kesey's second novel, which is longer and less well focused, reworks the same theme, and with almost the same hero. The effect is not that of an author repeating himself because he has nothing new to say, but of a man whose mind has been seized by something that will not let it free...
...Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey. From the vantage point of a mental institution, an angry, anguished attack on the middlebrow establishment is made by the mentally ill hero of this fine first novel...
...Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey. From the vantage point of a mental institution, an angry, anguished attack on the middlebrow establishment is made by the mentally ill hero of this fine first novel...