Word: kesey
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Kesey...
Before he became a character in American literature, Ken Kesey was a novelist. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) put him in the company of the young and the promising. He was a big man (a former wrestling champ at the University of Oregon) with a big talent. His family roots were in farming and logging; the rest is classic American tumbleweed. From Wallace Stegner's writing classes at Stanford, Kesey drifted to the San Francisco Bay Area, the playpen of countercultures. A bit young to be a founding beatnik...
...immobile and rusting on Kesey's farm in Pleasant Hill, Ore., the vehicle symbolizes the built-in obsolescence of 1960s enthusiasms. The same can be said for Demon Box, a collection of new and previously published magazine pieces about the good old days, departed friends, family, the pull of the soil and the lure of dope. Spruced up and polished, these writings impress and entertain but seem like an attempt to squeeze a few more miles out of a writer who has either run out of gas or has been stalled by too many chemical additives...
...diethylamide was entirely legal in California until October 1966, and the mind-expanding drug made popular in these parts by ex-Prof. Timothy Leary fueled the "Hashberry" from start to finish. Publicly-advertised acid tests--group tripping experiences organized by novelist Ken ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") Kesey and his Merry Pranksters--spread the wonder drug from the province of a few enlightened intellectuals to the grasp of any who wanted to know...
...result is that the fans, knowing nothing important to the contrary, can go on assuming that the Dead live in a warm, funky, '60s time warp that has not really changed since the days when they jammed at the Acid Test roisterings of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. Playing in a rock band for 20 years is probably a good way of staying in a time warp, and if the legs go first, as with boxers and third basemen, you do not pick guitar with your toes. But the stranger truth is that the Dead Heads have...