Word: kesey
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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...
Will the weight of envious mediocrities and malevolent mischance bring Stamper down, or will he be able to float his log booms down the river in time to meet his contract? The question sounds like rank melodrama, but it is not; Author Kesey's novel is big and clumsy, but its questions matter very much...
...Twisted. Kesey has given himself space for some funny, sharply drawn minor characters and some fine logging scenes. But there is too much of the tedious Lee, too many thrown-in anecdotes. The book suffers from a Thomas Wolfish effort to be as big and brawling as the country it describes. The attempt blurs Kesey's view of his real theme-the weakness of the strong and the persistent tensility of the weak...