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Ken Kesey

Born

in La Junta, Colorado, The United States

September 17, 1935

Died

November 10, 2001

Website

http://www.key-z.com/

Genre

Literature & Fiction

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American writer, who gained world fame with his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962, filmed 1975). In the 1960s, Kesey became a counterculture hero and a guru of psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary. Kesey has been called the Pied Piper, who changed the beat generation into the hippie movement.

Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, CO, and brought up in Eugene, OR. Kesey spent his early years hunting, fishing, swimming; he learned to box and wrestle, and he was a star football player. He studied at the University of Oregon, where he acted in college plays. On graduating he won a scholarship to Stanford University. Kesey soon dropped out, joined the counterculture movement, and began experimenting with drugs. In 1956 he married his school s American writer, who gained world fame with his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962, filmed 1975). In the 1960s, Kesey became a counterculture hero and a guru of psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary. Kesey has been called the Pied Piper, who changed the beat generation into the hippie movement.

Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, CO, and brought up in Eugene, OR. Kesey spent his early years hunting, fishing, swimming; he learned to box and wrestle, and he was a star football player. He studied at the University of Oregon, where he acted in college plays. On graduating he won a scholarship to Stanford University. Kesey soon dropped out, joined the counterculture movement, and began experimenting with drugs. In 1956 he married his school sweetheart, Faye Haxby.

Kesey attended a creative writing course taught by the novelist Wallace Stegner. His first work was an unpublished novel, ZOO, about the beatniks of the North Beach community in San Francisco. Tom Wolfe described in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) Kesey and his friends, called the Merry Pranksters, as they traveled the country and used various hallucinogens. Their bus, called Furthur, was painted in Day-Glo colors. In California Kesey's friends served LSD-laced Kool-Aid to members of their parties.

At a Veterans' Administration hospital in Menlo Park, California, Kesey was paid as a volunteer experimental subject, taking mind-altering drugs and reporting their effects. These experiences as a part-time aide at a psychiatric hospital, LSD sessions - and a vision of an Indian sweeping there the floor - formed the background for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, set in a mental hospital. While writing the work, and continuing in the footsteps of such writers as Thomas De Quincy (Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1821), Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception, 1954), and William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch, 1959), Kesey took peyote. The story is narrated by Chief Bromden. Into his world enters the petty criminal and prankster Randall Patrick McMurphy with his efforts to change the bureaucratic system of the institution, ruled by Nurse Ratched.

The film adaptation of the book gained a huge success. When the film won five Academy Awards, Kesey was barely mentioned during the award ceremonies, and he made known his unhappiness with the film. He did not like Jack Nicholson, or the script, and sued the producers.

Kesey's next novel, Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), appeared two years later and was also made into a film, this time directed by Paul Newman. The story was set in a logging community and centered on two brothers and their bitter rivalry in the family. After the work, Kesey gave up publishing novels. He formed a band of "Merry Pranksters", set up a commune in La Honda, California, bought an old school bus, and toured America and Mexico with his friends, among them Neal Cassady, Kerouac's travel companion. Dressed in a jester's outfit, Kesey was the chief prankster.

In 1965 Kesey was arrested for possession of marijuana. He fled to Mexico, where he faked an unconvincing suicide and then returned to the United States, serving a five-month prison sentence at the San Mateo County Jail. After this tumultuous period he bought farm in Pleasant Hill, Oregon, settled down with his wife to raise their four children, and taught a graduate writing seminar at the University of Oregon. In the early 1970s Kesey returned to writing and published Kesey's Garage Sale (1973). His later works include the children's book Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear(1990) and Sailor Song (1992), a futuristic tale about an Alaskan fishing village and Hollywood film crew. Last Go Around (1994), Kesey's last book, was an account of a famous Oregon rodeo written in the form of pulp fiction. In 2001, Kesey died of complications after surgery for liver cancer. ...more

Combine Editions
Ken Kesey's Books

Average rating: 4.18 · 514,944 ratings · 8,671 reviews · 34 distinct works · Similar authors

	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 4.18 avg rating — 493,750 ratings — published 1962 — 261 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sometimes a Great Notion 4.24 avg rating — 15,943 ratings — published 1964 — 44 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sailor Song 3.55 avg rating — 1,859 ratings — published 1992 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Demon Box 3.56 avg rating — 1,290 ratings — published 1986 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Last Go Round: A Real Western by Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs 3.79 avg rating — 521 ratings — published 1994 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Acid Tests 3.70 avg rating — 223 ratings — published 1965	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Further Inquiry by Ken Kesey, Ron Bevirt (Photographer) 3.61 avg rating — 201 ratings — published 1990 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Kesey's Garage Sale 3.61 avg rating — 191 ratings — published 1973 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Kesey's Jail Journal by Ken Kesey, Ed McClanahan (Introduction) 3.76 avg rating — 173 ratings — published 2003	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear by Ken Kesey, Barry Moser 4.20 avg rating — 117 ratings — published 1990 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Ken Kesey

“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

tags: relationships

2212 likes

“It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.”
― Ken Kesey, Kesey's Garage Sale

tags: enlightenment, existence

1496 likes

“All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

tags: psychology

571 likes

See all Ken Kesey's quotes »

Polls

March 2016 Revisit the Shelf Reread Poll

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, 325 pages, 1962

26 votes, 11.6%

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 331 pages, 1911

22 votes, 9.8%

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, 277 pages, 1951

19 votes, 8.4%

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, 277 pages, 1953

18 votes, 8.0%

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, 146 pages, 1962

17 votes, 7.6%

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, 254 pages, 1890

17 votes, 7.6%

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, 200 pages, 1899

16 votes, 7.1%

1984 by George Orwell, 268 pages, 1949

15 votes, 6.7%

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, 453 pages, 1961

14 votes, 6.2%

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, 320 pages. 1935

14 votes, 6.2%

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, 672 pages, 1960

11 votes, 4.9%

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, 320 pages, 1984

10 votes, 4.4%

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, 786 pages, 1844

8 votes, 3.6%

Despair by Vladimir Nabokov, 212 pages, 1934

7 votes, 3.1%

Out of Africa by Karen Blixen, 399 pages, 1937

6 votes, 2.7%

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, 240 pages, 1984

5 votes, 2.2%

225 total votes

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