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'''Ken Kesey''' (], ] – ], ]) was an ] ]. Not 950s]] and the "]s" of the ]. '''Ken Kesey''' (], ] – ], ]) was an ] ]. Not 950s]] and the "]s" of the ].


Born ], he spent much of his youth in the ]. There he married Faye Haxby, with whom he had three children, Jed, Zane and Shannon. He attended the ], where he received a degree in speech and communication and was an ]-caliber ]. He was awarded a ] in ]; he moved to ] to enroll in the creative writing program at ]. Born in ], he spent much of his youth in the ]. There he married Faye Haxby, with whom he had three children, Jed, Zane and Shannon. He attended the ], where he received a degree in speech and communication and was an ]-caliber ]. He was awarded a ] in ]; he moved to ] to enroll in the creative writing program at ].


At Stanford in ], he volunteered to take part in a study at the ] Veterans Hospital on the effects of ] such as ], ], ], and ]. He wrote many detailed descriptions of his experience with these drugs, both during the study and in his own experimentation. It was at this time he wrote ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'', which caught the attention of many, including "beat" poet ], who had accompanied ] on the trip described in Kerouac's '']''. At Stanford in ], he volunteered to take part in a study at the ] Veterans Hospital on the effects of ] such as ], ], ], and ]. He wrote many detailed descriptions of his experience with these drugs, both during the study and in his own experimentation. It was at this time he wrote ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'', which caught the attention of many, including "beat" poet ], who had accompanied ] on the trip described in Kerouac's '']''.

Revision as of 07:40, 13 February 2005

Ken Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American author. Not 950s]] and the "hippies" of the 1960s.

Born in La Junta, Colorado, he spent much of his youth in the Pacific Northwest. There he married Faye Haxby, with whom he had three children, Jed, Zane and Shannon. He attended the University of Oregon, where he received a degree in speech and communication and was an Olympic-caliber wrestler. He was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship in 1958; he moved to Palo Alto, California to enroll in the creative writing program at Stanford University.

At Stanford in 1959, he volunteered to take part in a study at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital on the effects of psychoactive drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and IT-290 (AMT). He wrote many detailed descriptions of his experience with these drugs, both during the study and in his own experimentation. It was at this time he wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which caught the attention of many, including "beat" poet Neal Cassady, who had accompanied Jack Kerouac on the trip described in Kerouac's On the Road.

With the commercial success of his first novel in 1962, Kesey moved to La Honda, in the mountains outside of San Francisco. He frequently entertained friends with parties he called "Acid Tests" involving music (such as Kesey's favorite band, The Warlocks, later known as the Grateful Dead), black lights, fluorescent paint, strobes, and other "psychedelic" effects, and of course LSD (often slipped surreptitiously into a punch).

When the publication of his second novel Sometimes a Great Notion in 1964 required his presence in New York, Kesey, Cassady, and others in a group of friends they called the "Merry Pranksters" took a cross-country trip in a school bus nicknamed Furthur. This trip, described in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and later in Kesey's own screenplay "The Further Inquiry") included many stops along the way for audience-participation acid tests, now including raps by Cassady. In New York, Cassady introduced Kesey to Kerouac and to Allen Ginsberg, who in turn introduced them to Timothy Leary.

Kesey and some of the pranksters fled to Mexico when LSD was made illegal, renaming their bus Furthur in an intentionally feeble attempt at disguise. When the bus returned to the U.S. for an Acid Test Graduation, Kesey and some of his companions were arrested for possession of marijuana.

After his release from jail, he moved with his family back to the family farm in Pleasant Hill, Oregon in the Willamette Valley, where he was to spend the rest of his life. He wrote many articles, smaller books (mostly collections of his articles), and short stories during that time.

Miscellaneous facts and events

Sometimes a Great Notion was made into a 1971 film starring Paul Newman; it was nominated for two Academy Awards and in 1972 was the first film shown in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on a new television network called HBO.

In 1975, Milos Forman directed a screen adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest starring Jack Nicholson which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Between 1974 and 1981 he self-published six issues of a literary magazine called Spit in the Ocean.

Kesey won the Robert Kirsch Award in 1991, recognizing him for a body of work written in or about the American West. His third major novel, Sailor Song, was published in 1992.

Kesey died on November 10, 2001, following liver cancer surgery.

Major works

In the 1990s Kesey published the children's books Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear (ISBN 067081136X) which was included on the 1991 Library of Congress list of suggested children's books, and The Sea Lion: A Story of the Sea Cliff People (ISBN 0670839167).

External links

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