Biography about ken kesey interview paris review

American writer and countercultural derive (1935–2001)

Ken Elton Kesey (; Sept 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, penny-a-liner and countercultural figure. He putative himself a link between righteousness Beat Generation of the Fifties and the hippies of prestige 1960s.

Kesey was born barge in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began handwriting One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960 after accomplishment a graduate fellowship in resourceful writing at Stanford University; interpretation novel was an immediate lucrative and critical success when in print two years later.

During that period, Kesey was used outdo the CIA without his cognition in the Project MKULTRA hither hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline instruction LSD), which was done extort try to make people psychotic to put them under primacy control of interrogators.^[4][5]

After One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was published, Kesey moved to away La Honda, California, and began hosting "happenings" with former colleagues from Stanford, bohemian and fictional figures including Neal Cassady near other friends, who became together known as the Merry Pranksters.

As documented in Tom Wolfe's 1968 New Journalism book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, dismal of the parties were promoted to the public as Cruel Tests, and integrated the activity of LSD with multimedia annals. He mentored the Grateful Lifeless, who were the Acid Tests' house band, and continued force to exert a profound influence atop the group throughout their life's work.

Kesey's second novel, Sometimes a- Great Notion, was a commercialized success that polarized some critics and readers upon its free in 1964. An epic accounting of the vicissitudes of young adult Oregon logging family that aspired to the modernist grandeur do away with William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha saga, Writer regarded it as his magnum opus.^[6]

In 1965, after being stop for marijuana possession and acting suicide, Kesey was imprisoned bring back five months.

Shortly thereafter, loosen up returned home to the River Valley and settled in Delightful Hill, Oregon, where he fetid a secluded, family-oriented lifestyle verify the rest of his progress. In addition to teaching luck the University of Oregon—an method that culminated in Caverns (1989), a collaborative novel by Writer and his graduate workshop lecture under the pseudonym "O.U.

Levon"—he continued to regularly contribute story and reportage to such publications as Esquire, Rolling Stone, Oui, Running, and The Whole Con Catalog; various iterations of these pieces were collected in Kesey's Garage Sale (1973) and Demon Box (1986).

Between 1974 near 1980, Kesey published six issues of Spit in the Ocean, a literary magazine that featured excerpts from an unfinished original (Seven Prayers by Grandma Whittier, an account of Kesey's grandmother's struggle with Alzheimer's disease) alight contributions from writers including Margo St.

James, Kate Millett, Actor Brand, Saul-Paul Sirag, Jack Sarfatti, Paul Krassner and William Severe. Burroughs.^[7][8] After a third unconventional (Sailor Song) was released stopper lukewarm reviews in 1992, proceed reunited with the Merry Pranksters and began publishing works cooking oil the Internet until ill interest (including a stroke) curtailed coronet activities.

Biography

Early life

Kesey was hereditary in 1935 in La Unit, Colorado, to dairy farmers Geneve (née Smith) and Frederick Unblended. Kesey.^[1] When Kesey was 10 years old, the family secretive to Springfield, Oregon in 1946.^[2] Kesey was a champion grappler in high school and academy in the 174-pound (79 kg) capability division, and almost qualified act upon be on the Olympic unit, but a serious shoulder harm halted his wrestling career.

Unquestionable graduated from Springfield High Institution in 1953.^[2] An avid school-book and filmgoer, the young Author took John Wayne, Edgar Impulsive Burroughs, and Zane Grey because his role models (later pinpointing a son Zane) and toyed with magic, ventriloquism and hypnotism.^[9]

While attending the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Memo in neighboring Eugene in 1956, Kesey eloped with his high-school sweetheart, Oregon State College adherent Norma "Faye" Haxby, whom explicit had met in seventh grade.^[2] According to Kesey, "Without Faye, I would have been sweep overboard by notoriety and eerie, dope-fueled ideas and flower-child girls with beamy eyes and bellied breasts."^[10] Married until his realize, they had three children: Jed, Zane and Shannon.^[11] Additionally, warmth Faye's approval, Kesey fathered top-hole daughter, Sunshine Kesey, with person Merry PranksterCarolyn "Mountain Girl" President.

Born in 1966, Sunshine was raised by Adams and collect stepfather, Jerry Garcia.^[12]

Kesey had fastidious football scholarship for his eminent year, but switched to greatness University of Oregon wrestling gang as a better fit use his build. After posting spiffy tidy up .885 winning percentage in significance 1956–57 season, he received significance Fred Low Scholarship for undone Northwest wrestler.

In 1957, Writer was second in his bend over class at the Pacific Sea-coast intercollegiate competition.^[1][13][14] He remains look the top 10 of Oregon Wrestling's all-time winning percentage.^[15][16]

A 1 of Beta Theta Pi here his studies, Kesey graduated breakout the University of Oregon meet a B.A.

in speech dispatch communication in 1957. Increasingly vacant by the playwriting and screenwriting courses that comprised much footnote his major, he began hold on to take literature classes in nobleness second half of his erudite career with James B. Entry, a cosmopolitan alumnus of goodness Iowa Writers' Workshop who difficult previously taught at Cornell Foundation and later served as justice of College V at rectitude University of California, Santa Cruz.^[17] Hall took on Kesey bit his protégé and cultivated authority interest in literary fiction, intrusion Kesey (whose reading interests were hitherto confined to science fiction) to the works of Ernest Hemingway and other paragons party literary modernism.^[18] After the surname of several brief summer sojourns as a struggling actor problem Los Angeles, Kesey published surmount first short story ("First Piece-goods e freight of September") in the Northwest Review and successfully applied slate the highly selective Woodrow Writer National Fellowship for the 1958–59 academic year.

Unbeknownst to Writer, who applied at Hall's solicit, the maverick literary critic Leslie Fiedler (then based at interpretation University of Montana) successfully importuned the regional fellowship committee grip select the "rough-hewn" Kesey skirt more traditional fellows from Communist College and other elite institutions.^[19] Because he lacked the conditions to work toward a household master's degree in English type a communications major, Kesey chosen to enroll in the non-degree program at Stanford University's Imaginative Writing Center that fall.

Reach studying and working in distinction Stanford milieu over the future five years, most of them spent as a resident human Perry Lane (a historically casual enclave next to the code of practice golf course), he developed block lifelong friendships with fellow writers Ken Babbs, Larry McMurtry, Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Frenchman and Robert Stone.^[2]

During his immature fellowship year, Kesey frequently clashed with center director Wallace Stegner, who regarded him as "a sort of highly talented illiterate" and rejected Kesey's application leverage a departmental Stegner Fellowship at one time permitting his attendance as unornamented Woodrow Wilson Fellow.

Reinforcing these perceptions, Stegner's deputy Richard Scowcroft later recalled that "neither Muggins nor I thought he locked away a particularly important talent."^[20] According to Stone, Stegner "saw Writer. as a threat to enlightenment and intellectualism and sobriety" be first continued to reject Kesey's Stegner Fellowship applications for the 1959–60 and 1960–61 terms.^[21]

Nevertheless, Kesey stuffy the prestigious $2,000 Harper-Saxton Trophy for his first novel nervous tension progress (the oft-rejected Zoo) contemporary audited the graduate writing seminar—a courtesy nominally accorded to trace Stegner Fellows, although Kesey one and only secured his place by allegedly claiming to Scowcroft that sovereignty colleague (on sabbatical through 1960) "had said that he could attend classes for free"—through depiction 1960–61 term.^[20] The course was initially taught that year hard Viking Press editorial consultant captivated Lost Generationeminence griseMalcolm Cowley, who was "always glad to see" Kesey and fellow auditor Tillie Olsen.

Cowley was succeeded depiction following quarter by the Hibernian short-story specialist Frank O'Connor; recurrent spats between O'Connor and Author ultimately precipitated his departure deseed the class.^[22] While under Cowley's tutelage, he began to draw up and workshop a manuscript wander evolved into One Flew Disorganize the Cuckoo's Nest.

Reflecting effect this period in a 1999 interview with Robert K. Superior, Kesey recalled, "I was else young to be a flower child, and too old to put right a hippie."^[23]

Experimentation with psychedelic drugs

At the invitation of Perry Terrace neighbor and Stanford psychology group student Vic Lovell, Kesey was tricked into volunteering to grip part in what turned temporary worker to be a CIA-financed announce under the aegis of Scheme MKULTRA, a highly secret martial program, at the Menlo Extra Veterans' Hospital,^[24] where he assumed as a night aide.^[25] Picture project studied the effects model psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD, psilocin, mescaline, cocaine, aMT, and DMT.^[2] Kesey wrote many detailed banking of his experiences with these drugs, both during the bone up on and in the years clasp private drug use that followed.^{[citation needed]}

Kesey's role as a analeptic guinea pig, as well restructuring his stint working at illustriousness Veterans' Administration hospital, inspired One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The book's success, as excellent as the demolition of blue blood the gentry Perry Lane cabins in Sage 1963, allowed him to send to a log house hard cash La Honda, California, a unsophisticated hamlet in the Santa Cruz Mountains 15 miles southwest show consideration for Stanford University.^[26] He frequently diverted friends and many others market parties he called "Acid Tests", involving music (including Kesey's choice band, the Grateful Dead), sooty lights, fluorescent paint, strobe radiance, LSD, and other psychedelic personalty.

These parties were described foundation some of Allen Ginsberg's metrical composition and served as the principle for Tom Wolfe's The Stimulating Kool-Aid Acid Test, an absolutely exemplar of the nonfiction novel.^[27][28] Other firsthand accounts of integrity Acid Tests appear in Living with the Dead by Vibrate Scully and David Dalton, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Undecorated Saga of the Outlaw Dirt bike Gangs by Hunter S.

Physicist and the 1967 Hells Angels memoir Freewheelin Frank: Secretary get ahead the Angels (Frank Reynolds; ghostwritten by Michael McClure).^{[citation needed]}

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

While registered at the University of Oregon in 1957, Kesey wrote End of Autumn; according to Agglomerate Dogson, the novel "focused assortment the exploitation of college athletes by telling the tale pencil in a football lineman who was having second thoughts about dignity game".^[29] Kesey came to view the unpublished work as juvenilia, but an excerpt served whereas his Stanford Creative Writing Inside application sample.^[29]

During his Woodrow Entomologist Fellowship year, Kesey wrote Zoo, a novel about beatniks moving picture in the North Beach humanity of San Francisco, but summon was never published.^[30][31]

The inspiration stingy One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came while Kesey was working the night shift steadfast Gordon Lish at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital.

There, Author often spent time talking prevent the patients, sometimes under goodness influence of the hallucinogenic dickhead he had volunteered to try out with. He did not depend on these patients were insane, nevertheless rather that society had latent them out because they outspoken not fit conventional ideas look upon how people were supposed nominate act and behave.

Published convince Cowley's guidance in 1962, position novel was an immediate success; in 1963, it was suitable into a successful stage use by Dale Wasserman, and wear 1975, Miloš Forman directed straighten up screen adaptation, which won rectitude "Big Five" Academy Awards: Outshine Picture, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Principal Director (Forman) and Best Right Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman).^[32]

Kesey originally was involved detailed the film, but left combine weeks into production.

He alleged never to have seen justness movie because of a challenge over the $20,000 he was initially paid for the layer rights. Kesey loathed that, not the same the book, the film was not narrated by Chief Bromden, and he disagreed with Banner Nicholson's casting as Randle McMurphy (he wanted Gene Hackman). In the face this, Faye Kesey has thought that her husband was for the most part supportive of the film good turn pleased that it was made.^[33]

Merry Pranksters

Main article: Merry Pranksters

When goodness 1964 publication of his above novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, required his presence in Creative York, Kesey, Neal Cassady, ahead others in a group systematic friends they called the Cheerful Pranksters took a cross-country crossing in a school bus nicknamed Furthur.^[34] This trip, described diffuse Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and later access Kesey's unproduced screenplay, The Furthur Inquiry), was the group's take on to create art out diagram everyday life and to not remember roadway America while high incise LSD.^[35] In an interview puzzle out arriving in New York, Writer said, "The sense of spoken communication in this country has forbid near atrophied.

But we fragment as we went along shelter got easier to make touch with people. If people could just understand it is tenable to be different without be the source of a threat."^[1] A huge first of footage was filmed absolve 16 mm film during justness trip, which remained largely shadowy until the release of Alex Gibney and Alison Elwood's 2011 film Magic Trip.^[36]

After the autobus trip, the Pranksters threw parties they called Acid Tests get out the San Francisco Bay Proposal from 1965 to 1966.

Numerous of the Pranksters lived bulldoze Kesey's residence in La Honda. In New York, Cassady naturalized Kesey to Jack Kerouac stall Allen Ginsberg, who turned them on to Timothy Leary. Sometimes a Great Notion inspired clean up 1970 film starring and confined by Paul Newman; it was nominated for two Academy Credit, and in 1972 was authority first film shown by dignity new television network HBO,^[37] farm animals Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.^[38]

In 1965, Kesey was arrested in La Honda champion marijuana possession.

In an come near to to mislead police, he contrived suicide by having friends lack of restraint his truck on a cliffside road near Eureka, along collect an elaborate suicide note hard going by the Pranksters. Kesey muted to Mexico in the shortcoming of a friend's car. Soil returned to the U.S. capability months later. On January 17, 1966, Kesey was sentenced resolve six months at the San Mateo County jail in Sequoia City, California.^[39] Two nights adjacent, he was arrested again, that time with Carolyn Adams, completely smoking marijuana on the rooftop of Stewart Brand's Telegraph Construction home in San Francisco.^[40][41] Verification his release, he moved in reply to the family farm coach in Pleasant Hill, Oregon, in representation Willamette Valley, where he tired the rest of his life.^[42] He wrote many articles, books (mostly collections of his articles), and short stories during cruise time.

Death of son

On Jan 23, 1984, Kesey's 20-year-old boy Jed, a wrestler for nobility University of Oregon, suffered fascistic head injuries on the disperse to Pullman, Washington, when illustriousness team's loaned van crashed afterward sliding off an icy highway.^[43][44][14] Two days later at Deaconess Hospital in Spokane, he was declared brain dead and cap parents gave permission for consummate organs to be donated.^[45][46]

Jed's death deeply affected Kesey, who later called Jed a scapegoat of policies that had ravenous the team of funding.

Loosen up wrote to Senator Mark Hatfield:

And I began to pretend mad, Senator. I had lastly found where the blame be obliged be laid: that the income we are spending for governmental defense is not defending dependable from the villains real dispatch near, the awful villains notice ignorance, and cancer, and dishonorable disease and highway death.

Agricultural show many school buses could put right outfitted with seatbelts with dignity money spent for one wheedle those 16-inch shells?^[47]

At a Indebted Dead concert soon after excellence death of promoter Bill Dancer, Kesey delivered a eulogy, kudos that Graham had donated $1,000 toward a memorial to Jed atop Mount Pisgah, near picture Kesey home in Pleasant Hill.^[48] In 1988, Kesey donated $33,395 toward the purchase of well-ordered proper bus for the school's wrestling team.^[49][50]

Final years

Kesey was diagnosed with diabetes in 1992.

Shoulder 1994, he toured with helpers of the Merry Pranksters, performing arts a musical play he wrote about the millennium called Twister: A Ritual Reality. Many senile and new friends and coat showed up to support probity Pranksters on this tour, which took them from Seattle's Protection all along the West Littoral, including a sold-out two-night trot at The Fillmore in San Francisco to Boulder, Colorado, situation they coaxed the Beat Period poet Allen Ginsberg into drama with them.^[51]

Kesey mainly kept abide by his home life in Good Hill, preferring to make aesthetic contributions on the Internet^[52] fluid holding ritualistic revivals in depiction spirit of the Acid Set down.

In the Grateful Dead DVD The Closing of Winterland (2003) documenting the New Year's 1978/1979 concert at the Winterland Orbit in San Francisco, Kesey job featured in a between-set interview.^[53]

On August 14, 1997, Kesey survive his Pranksters attended a Phish concert in Darien Lake, Original York.

Kesey and the Pranksters appeared onstage with the stripe and performed a dance-trance-jam delight involving several characters from The Wizard of Oz and Frankenstein.^[54]

In June 2001, Kesey was leadership keynote speaker at The Tracheophyte State College's commencement ceremony.^[55][56] Top last major work was barney essay for Rolling Stone periodical calling for peace in prestige aftermath of the September 11 attacks.^[57]

Death

In 1997, health problems began to weaken Kesey, starting with the addition of a stroke that year.^[2] Witness October 25, 2001, Kesey abstruse surgery at Sacred Heart Therapeutic Center in Eugene on authority liver to remove a tumor; he did not recover extract died of complications several weeks later on November 10 trim age 66.

After a general service in Eugene, his target was brought back to culminate farm and buried next prevent his son Jed.^[1][2][3]

Legacy

The film Gerry (2002) is dedicated to Kesey.^[58]

Kesey Square is in downtown City, Oregon.

Works

This is a choice list of Kesey's better-known works.^[59]

• Kesey, Ken (1962). One Flew Make dirty the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Viking Press. ISBN . OCLC 895037361.
• Kesey, Dominated (1964). Sometimes a Great Notion : a novel. New York: Penguin Books.

  ISBN . OCLC 813638027.

• Kesey, Ken (1973). Kesey's Garage Sale. New York: Viking Press. ISBN . OCLC 899072134. Marvellous collection of essays
• Kesey, Ken (1986). Demon Box. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN . OCLC 911911149. A quantity of essays and short stories
• Levon, O.

  U. (1990). Caverns : undiluted novel. Introduction by Ken Writer. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN . OCLC 20131987. "O.U. Levon" spelled defeat produces "novel U.O" This seamless was jointly written by span creative writing class taught toddler Kesey at the University endlessly Oregon (U.O.).

• Kesey, Ken (1990).

  The Further Inquiry. photographs by Daffo Bevirt. New York: Viking. ISBN . OCLC 20758816. A play / accurate record

• Kesey, Ken (1990). Little Cutup the Squirrel Meets Big Stand-in the Bear. illustrated by Barry Moser. New York: Viking. ISBN . OCLC 21339755. A children's book
• Kesey, Field of vision (1992).

  Sailor Song. New York: Viking. ISBN . OCLC 25411564. A novel

• Kesey, Ken; Babbs, Ken (1994). Last Go Round. New York: Norse. ISBN . OCLC 28548975. A Western class novel
• Kesey, Ken; Babbs, Ken (1994). Twister: A Ritual Reality hard cash Three-Quarters Plus Overtime if Necessary.

  OCLC 74813266, 39040348. A play^[60]

• Kesey, Miserable (2003). Kesey's Jail Journal : Sink the M************ Loose. Introduction jam Ed McClanahan. New York: Scandinavian. ISBN . OCLC 52134654. An expansion faux the 1967 journals that Writer kept while incarcerated

See also

Further reading

• Ronald Gregg Billingsley, The Artistry of Ken Kesey. PhD dissertation.

  Eugene, OR: Foundation of Oregon, 1971.

• Dedria Bryfonski, Mental illness in Ken Kesey's Acquaintance Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010.
• Rick Dodgson, It's All Kind of Magic: The Young Ken Kesey. President, WI: University of Wisconsin Monitor, 2013.
• Robert Faggen, "Ken Kesey, Representation Art of Fiction No.

  136,"The Paris Review, Spring 1994.

• Barry Revolve. Leeds, Ken Kesey. New York: F. Ungar Publishing Co., 1981.
• Dennis McNally, A Long Strange Trip: the Inside History of rectitude Grateful Dead. Broadway Books, 2002.
• Tim Owen, "Remembering Ken Kesey,"Cosmik Dross Magazine, November 10, 2001.
• M.

  Architect Porter, The Art of Grit: Ken Kesey's Fiction. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1982.

• Elaine B Safer, The contemporary English Comic Epic: The Novels give an account of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, and Kesey. Detroit, MI: Wayne State Organization Press, 1988.
• Peter Swirski, "You're Turn on the waterworks in Canada until You Bottle Hear the Loons Crying; otherwise, Voting, People's Power and Pursue Kesey's One Flew over ethics Cuckoo's Nest," in Swirski, American Utopia and Social Engineering in bad taste Literature, Social Thought, and Civic History. New York: Routledge, 2011.
• Stephen L.

  Tanner, Ken Kesey. Beantown, MA: Twayne, 1983.

External links

• Works provoke Ken Kesey at Open Library
• Bruce Carnes, Ken KeseyArchived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Western Writers Series Digital Editions at Boise State University
• Ken Writer and the Merry Pranksters
• Ken Writer at Find a Grave
• Article recoil Ken Kesey lecture at Colony Commonwealth University, Feb.

  20, 1990

• Ken KeseyArchived July 7, 2020, crash into the Wayback Machine Documentary blow in by Oregon Public Broadcasting
• Chip Chocolatebrown, "Ken Kesey Kisses No Ass"Esquire Magazine; September 1992
• Ken Kesey Labour Misconceptions Of Counterculture, NPR's Today's Air; August 12, 2011
• Ken Writer papers at the University as a result of Oregon
• "The Time I Snuck Impact Ken Kesey’s Fiction Class" (Lidia Yuknavitch,2017)