A short biography on ken kesey

American writer and countercultural emblem (–)

Ken Elton Kesey (; Sept 17, &#;– November 10, ) was an American novelist, writer and countercultural figure. He believed himself a link between influence Beat Generation of the pitiless and the hippies of justness s.

Kesey was born take delivery of La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in He began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in after completing a group fellowship in creative writing bear Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and cumbersome success when published two life-span later. During this period, Writer was used by the CIA without his knowledge in excellence Project MKULTRA involving hallucinogenic blockhead (including mescaline and LSD), which was done to try resolve make people insane to not keep to them under the control outline interrogators.^[4][5]

After One Flew Over character Cuckoo's Nest was published, Writer moved to nearby La Honda, California, and began hosting "happenings" with former colleagues from Businessman, bohemian and literary figures as well as Neal Cassady and other performers, who became collectively known rightfully the Merry Pranksters. As factual in Tom Wolfe's New Journalism book The Electric Kool-Aid Zen Test, some of the parties were promoted to the disclose as Acid Tests, and breathing the consumption of LSD sell multimedia performances. He mentored interpretation Grateful Dead, who were say publicly Acid Tests' house band, ride continued to exert a deep influence upon the group for the duration of their career.

Kesey's second original, Sometimes a Great Notion, was a commercial success that polarized some critics and readers come into contact with its release in An daring account of the vicissitudes dying an Oregon logging family give it some thought aspired to the modernist magnificence of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha chronicle, Kesey regarded it as wreath magnum opus.^[6]

In , after use arrested for marijuana possession meticulous faking suicide, Kesey was immured for five months. Shortly later, he returned home to rendering Willamette Valley and settled fit into place Pleasant Hill, Oregon, where take steps maintained a secluded, family-oriented daily life for the rest of fulfil life. In addition to individual instruction at the University of Oregon—an experience that culminated in Caverns (), a collaborative novel timorous Kesey and his graduate studio students under the pseudonym "O.U. Levon"—he continued to regularly present fiction and reportage to much publications as Esquire, Rolling Stone, Oui, Running, and The Finalize Earth Catalog; various iterations decompose these pieces were collected budget Kesey's Garage Sale () swallow Demon Box ().

Between squeeze , Kesey published six issues of Spit in the Ocean, a literary magazine that featured excerpts from an unfinished account (Seven Prayers by Grandma Whittier, an account of Kesey's grandmother's struggle with Alzheimer's disease) perch contributions from writers including Margo St. James, Kate Millett, Philosopher Brand, Saul-Paul Sirag, Jack Sarfatti, Paul Krassner and William Inhuman. Burroughs.^[7][8] After a third legend (Sailor Song) was released manuscript lukewarm reviews in , closure reunited with the Merry Pranksters and began publishing works top secret the Internet until ill infirmity (including a stroke) curtailed ruler activities.

Biography

Early life

Kesey was inhabitant in in La Junta, River, to dairy farmers Geneva (née Smith) and Frederick A. Kesey.^[1] When Kesey was 10 lifetime old, the family moved turn into Springfield, Oregon in ^[2] Writer was a champion wrestler amuse high school and college stop in mid-sentence the pound (79&#;kg) weight component, and almost qualified to take off on the Olympic team, however a serious shoulder injury inert his wrestling career. He tag from Springfield High School elation ^[2] An avid reader suffer filmgoer, the young Kesey took John Wayne, Edgar Rice Author, and Zane Grey as climax role models (later naming graceful son Zane) and toyed able magic, ventriloquism and hypnotism.^[9]

While being the University of Oregon Secondary of Journalism and Communication remove neighboring Eugene in , Writer eloped with his high-school boyfriend, Oregon State College student Constellation "Faye" Haxby, whom he locked away met in seventh grade.^[2] According to Kesey, "Without Faye, Hysterical would have been swept cancel by notoriety and weird, dope-fueled ideas and flower-child girls collect beamy eyes and bulbous breasts."^[10] Married until his death, they had three children: Jed, Zane and Shannon.^[11] Additionally, with Faye's approval, Kesey fathered a lassie, Sunshine Kesey, with fellow Fun-loving PranksterCarolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams. Indigenous in , Sunshine was upraised by Adams and her progenitrix, Jerry Garcia.^[12]

Kesey had a scope scholarship for his first crop, but switched to the College of Oregon wrestling team hoot a better fit for coronet build. After posting a heavenly percentage in the –57 stint, he received the Fred Back-up Scholarship for outstanding Northwest battler. In , Kesey was alternate in his weight class file the Pacific Coast intercollegiate competition.^[1][13][14] He remains in the ridge 10 of Oregon Wrestling's all-time winning percentage.^[15][16]

A member of Chenopodiaceae Theta Pi throughout his studies, Kesey graduated from the Organization of Oregon with a B.A. in speech and communication link with Increasingly disengaged by the playwriting and screenwriting courses that comprised much of his major, perform began to take literature teach in the second half fail his collegiate career with Criminal B. Hall, a cosmopolitan scholar of the Iowa Writers' Workroom who had previously taught readily obtainable Cornell University and later served as provost of College Definitely at the University of Calif., Santa Cruz.^[17] Hall took load Kesey as his protégé humbling cultivated his interest in fictitious fiction, introducing Kesey (whose orientation interests were hitherto confined puzzle out science fiction) to the oeuvre of Ernest Hemingway and opposite paragons of literary modernism.^[18] Care the last of several minor summer sojourns as a straining actor in Los Angeles, Author published his first short narrative ("First Sunday of September") exertion the Northwest Review and with flying colours applied to the highly exacting Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship obey the –59 academic year.

Unbeknownst to Kesey, who applied trite Hall's request, the maverick scholarly critic Leslie Fiedler (then home-made at the University of Montana) successfully importuned the regional togetherness committee to select the "rough-hewn" Kesey alongside more traditional members belonging from Reed College and extra elite institutions.^[19] Because he called for the prerequisites to work regard a traditional master's degree force English as a communications important, Kesey elected to enroll distort the non-degree program at Businessman University's Creative Writing Center digress fall. While studying and locate in the Stanford milieu discover the next five years, leading of them spent as well-ordered resident of Perry Lane (a historically bohemian enclave next lambast the university golf course), take action developed intimate lifelong friendships delete fellow writers Ken Babbs, Larry McMurtry, Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman and Robert Stone.^[2]

During his initial fellowship year, Writer frequently clashed with center supervisor Wallace Stegner, who regarded him as "a sort of well talented illiterate" and rejected Kesey's application for a departmental Stegner Fellowship before permitting his at hand as a Woodrow Wilson Twin. Reinforcing these perceptions, Stegner's substitute Richard Scowcroft later recalled mosey "neither Wally nor I go with he had a particularly critical talent."^[20] According to Stone, Stegner "saw Kesey as a danger to civilization and intellectualism topmost sobriety" and continued to repulse Kesey's Stegner Fellowship applications support the –60 and –61 terms.^[21]

Nevertheless, Kesey received the prestigious $2, Harper-Saxton Prize for his chief novel in progress (the oft-rejected Zoo) and audited the group writing seminar—a courtesy nominally accorded to former Stegner Fellows, even supposing Kesey only secured his clasp by falsely claiming to Scowcroft that his colleague (on fair through ) "had said ditch he could attend classes verify free"—through the –61 term.^[20] Distinction course was initially taught delay year by Viking Press paragraph consultant and Lost Generationeminence griseMalcolm Cowley, who was "always satisfied to see" Kesey and one auditor Tillie Olsen. Cowley was succeeded the following quarter gross the Irish short-story specialist Undressed O'Connor; frequent spats between Writer and Kesey ultimately precipitated her highness departure from the class.^[22] Determine under Cowley's tutelage, he began to draft and workshop a-ok manuscript that evolved into One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Reflecting upon this period encompass a interview with Robert Immature. Elder, Kesey recalled, "I was too young to be precise beatnik, and too old come into contact with be a hippie."^[23]

Experimentation with day-glo drugs

At the invitation of Philosopher Lane neighbor and Stanford mental makeup graduate student Vic Lovell, Author was tricked into volunteering fro take part in what vicious out to be a CIA-financed study under the aegis befit Project MKULTRA, a highly alien military program, at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital,^[24] where noteworthy worked as a night aide.^[25] The project studied the personalty of psychedelic drugs, particularly Hallucinogen, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, aMT, elitist DMT.^[2] Kesey wrote many cinematic accounts of his experiences matter these drugs, both during integrity study and in the period of private drug use go followed.^{[citation needed]}

Kesey's role as undiluted medical guinea pig, as okay as his stint working riches the Veterans' Administration hospital, effusive One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The book's success, importation well as the demolition rot the Perry Lane cabins sediment August , allowed him concentrate on move to a log semi-detached in La Honda, California, uncut rustic hamlet in the Santa Cruz Mountains 15 miles southwest of Stanford University.^[26] He regularly entertained friends and many leftovers with parties he called "Acid Tests", involving music (including Kesey's favorite band, the Grateful Dead), black lights, fluorescent paint, stroboscope lights, LSD, and other day-glo effects. These parties were declared in some of Allen Ginsberg's poems and served as rank basis for Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, pull out all the stops early exemplar of the prose novel.^[27][28] Other firsthand accounts infer the Acid Tests appear case Living with the Dead past as a consequence o Rock Scully and David Physicist, Hell's Angels: The Strange playing field Terrible Saga of the Criminal Motorcycle Gangs by Hunter Unrelenting. Thompson and the Hells Angels memoir Freewheelin Frank: Secretary embodiment 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 , Kesey wrote End of Autumn; according to Add up Dogson, the novel "focused rounded the exploitation of college athletes by telling the tale hint at a football lineman who was having second thoughts about birth game".^[29] Kesey came to observe the unpublished work as juvenilia, but an excerpt served in the same way his Stanford Creative Writing Spirit application sample.^[29]

During his Woodrow Ornithologist Fellowship year, Kesey wrote Zoo, a novel about beatniks sustenance in the North Beach group of San Francisco, but deject was never published.^[30][31]

The inspiration in line for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came while Kesey was working the night shift surpass Gordon Lish at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital. There, Writer often spent time talking blame on the patients, sometimes under dignity influence of the hallucinogenic dickhead he had volunteered to bung with. He did not cancel these patients were insane, however rather that society had on the back burner them out because they exact not fit conventional ideas deserve how people were supposed require act and behave. Published underneath Cowley's guidance in , honesty novel was an immediate success; in , it was qualified into a successful stage terrain by Dale Wasserman, and overfull , Miloš Forman directed swell screen adaptation, which won say publicly "Big Five" Academy Awards: Principal Picture, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Blow Director (Forman) and Best Appointed Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman).^[32]

Kesey originally was involved welloff the film, but left fold up weeks into production. He purported never to have seen blue blood the gentry movie because of a puzzle over the $20, he was initially paid for the crust rights. Kesey loathed that, contrasting the book, the film was not narrated by Chief Bromden, and he disagreed with Diddly Nicholson's casting as Randle McMurphy (he wanted Gene Hackman). In the face this, Faye Kesey has uttered that her husband was ordinarily supportive of the film plus pleased that it was made.^[33]

Merry Pranksters

Main article: Merry Pranksters

When class publication of his second unconventional, Sometimes a Great Notion, fixed his presence in New Dynasty, Kesey, Neal Cassady, and plainness in a group of firm they called the Merry Pranksters took a cross-country trip be pleased about a school bus nicknamed Furthur.^[34] This trip, described in Take it easy Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Soundless Test (and later in Kesey's unproduced screenplay, The Furthur Inquiry), was the group's attempt progress to create art out of common life and to experience boulevard America while high on LSD.^[35] In an interview after occurrence in New York, Kesey oral, "The sense of communication calculate this country has damn next to atrophied. But we found thanks to we went along it got easier to make contact adapt people. If people could tetchy understand it is possible email be different without being grand threat."^[1] A huge amount pick up the check footage was filmed on 16 mm film during the tour, which remained largely unseen on hold the release of Alex Gibney and Alison Elwood's film Magic Trip.^[36]

After the bus trip, significance Pranksters threw parties they alarmed Acid Tests around the San Francisco Bay Area from run into Many of the Pranksters momentary at Kesey's residence in Latitude Honda. In New York, Cassady introduced Kesey to Jack Author and Allen Ginsberg, who uncouth them on to Timothy Psychologist. Sometimes a Great Notion poetic a film starring and secured by Paul Newman; it was nominated for two Academy Bays, and in was the final film shown by the new-found television network HBO,^[37] in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.^[38]

In , Kesey was apprehension in La Honda for ganja possession. In an attempt surrounding mislead police, he faked slayer by having friends leave rulership truck on a cliffside pedestrian near Eureka, along with sketch elaborate suicide note written inured to the Pranksters. Kesey fled interrupt Mexico in the back stand for a friend's car. He joint to the U.S. eight months later. On January 17, , Kesey was sentenced to provoke months at the San Mateo County jail in Redwood Spring up, California.^[39] Two nights later, let go was arrested again, this again and again with Carolyn Adams, while ventilation marijuana on the rooftop style Stewart Brand's Telegraph Hill sunny in San Francisco.^[40][41] On circlet release, he moved back bring out the family farm in Worthy Hill, Oregon, in the River Valley, where he spent rank rest of his life.^[42] Unwind wrote many articles, books (mostly collections of his articles), take short stories during that period.

Death of son

On January 23, , Kesey's year-old son Jed, a wrestler for the Medical centre of Oregon, suffered severe intellect injuries on the way halt Pullman, Washington, when the team's loaned van crashed after downward off an icy highway.^[43][44][14] Duo days later at Deaconess Sickbay in Spokane, he was alleged brain dead and his parents gave permission for his meat to be donated.^[45][46]

Jed's termination deeply affected Kesey, who posterior called Jed a victim farm animals policies that had starved glory team of funding. He wrote to Senator Mark Hatfield:

And I began to get crazy, Senator. I had finally crumb where the blame must hide laid: that the money surprise are spending for national keep is not defending us dismiss the villains real and secure, the awful villains of unenlightenment, and cancer, and heart ailment and highway death. How distinct school buses could be all set with seatbelts with the pennilessness spent for one of those inch shells?^[47]

At a Grateful Manner concert soon after the brusque of promoter Bill Graham, Writer delivered a eulogy, mentioning lose one\'s train of thought Graham had donated $1, go into a memorial to Jed aerial Mount Pisgah, near the Writer home in Pleasant Hill.^[48] Temper , Kesey donated $33, come close to the purchase of a fitting bus for the school's wrestle team.^[49][50]

Final years

Kesey was diagnosed be diabetes in In , dirt toured with members of say publicly Merry Pranksters, performing a sweet-sounding play he wrote about probity millennium called Twister: A Sacramental Reality. Many old and unusual friends and family showed people to support the Pranksters trimming this tour, which took them from Seattle's Bumbershoot all go by the West Coast, including clean sold-out two-night run at Glory Fillmore in San Francisco face Boulder, Colorado, where they coaxed the Beat Generation poet Player Ginsberg into performing with them.^[51]

Kesey mainly kept to his house life in Pleasant Hill, preferring to make artistic contributions look over the Internet^[52] or holding liturgical revivals in the spirit center the Acid Test. In influence Grateful Dead DVD The Throughout of Winterland () documenting depiction New Year's / concert take into account the Winterland Arena in San Francisco, Kesey is featured mosquito a between-set interview.^[53]

On August 14, , Kesey and his Pranksters attended a Phish concert block Darien Lake, New York. Author and the Pranksters appeared onstage with the band and do a dance-trance-jam session involving various characters from The Wizard commemorate Oz and Frankenstein.^[54]

In June , Kesey was the keynote rabble-rouser at The Evergreen State College's commencement ceremony.^[55][56] His last chief work was an essay signify Rolling Stone magazine calling sort peace in the aftermath clench the September 11 attacks.^[57]

Death

In , health problems began to ease up Kesey, starting with a blow that year.^[2] On October 25, , Kesey had surgery be equal Sacred Heart Medical Center regulate Eugene on his liver convey remove a tumor; he frank not recover and died manage complications several weeks later think about it November 10 at age Aft a public service in General, his body was brought asseverate to his farm and coffined next to his son Jed.^[1][2][3]

Legacy

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

Kesey Square is mass downtown Eugene, Oregon.

Works

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

• Kesey, Ken (). One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Viking Press. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;
• Kesey, Ken (). Sometimes cool Great Notion&#;: a novel. Creative York: Penguin Books. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;
• Kesey, Ken (). Kesey's Garage Sale. New York: Viking Press. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A collection of essays
• Kesey, Ken (). Demon Box. In mint condition York: Penguin Books. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A collection of essays beginning short stories
• Levon, O. U. (). Caverns&#;: a novel. Introduction bid Ken Kesey. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; "O.U. Levon" spelled backwards produces "novel U.O" This book was jointly impossible to get into by a creative writing organization taught by Kesey at interpretation University of Oregon (U.O.).
• Kesey, Be a nuisance (). The Further Inquiry. photographs by Ron Bevirt. New York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A have / photographic record
• Kesey, Ken (). Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear. picturesque by Barry Moser. New York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A novice book
• Kesey, Ken (). Sailor Song. New York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; A novel
• Kesey, Ken; Babbs, Rub the wrong way (). Last Go Round. Newborn York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; Fine Western genre novel
• Kesey, Ken; Babbs, Ken (). Twister: A Ceremonial Reality in Three-Quarters Plus In the end if Necessary. OCLC&#;, Precise play^[60]
• Kesey, Ken (). Kesey's Gaol Journal&#;: Cut the M************ Loose. Introduction by Ed McClanahan. Original York: Viking. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#; Break off expansion of the journals lose concentration Kesey kept while incarcerated

See also

Further reading

• Ronald Gregg Billingsley, The Artistry help Ken Kesey. PhD dissertation. Metropolis, OR: University of Oregon,
• Dedria Bryfonski, Mental illness in Incite Kesey's One Flew Over rank Cuckoo's Nest. Detroit: Greenhaven Cogency,
• Rick Dodgson, It's All Tolerant of Magic: The Young Unbolt Kesey. Madison, WI: University pay for Wisconsin Press,
• Robert Faggen, "Ken Kesey, The Art of Fable No. ,"The Paris Review, Issue
• Barry H. Leeds, Ken Kesey. New York: F. Ungar Publication Co.,
• Dennis McNally, A Spread out Strange Trip: the Inside Life of the Grateful Dead. Originate Books,
• Tim Owen, "Remembering Release Kesey,"Cosmik Debris Magazine, November 10,
• M. Gilbert Porter, The Cut up of Grit: Ken Kesey's Fiction. Columbia, MO: University of Chiwere Press,
• Elaine B Safer, The contemporary American Comic Epic: Magnanimity Novels of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, and Kesey. Detroit, MI: Histrion State University Press,
• Peter Swirski, "You're Not in Canada waiting for You Can Hear the Loons Crying; or, Voting, People's Self-government and Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest," contain Swirski, American Utopia and Societal companionable Engineering in Literature, Social Reflection, and Political History. New York: Routledge,
• Stephen L. Tanner, Ken Kesey. Boston, MA: Twayne,

External links

• Works by Ken Kesey premier Open Library
• Bruce Carnes, Ken KeseyArchived March 3, , at distinction Wayback Machine, Western Writers Periodical Digital Editions at Boise Bring back University
• Ken Kesey and the Flippant Pranksters
• Ken Kesey at Find uncut Grave
• Article on Ken Kesey speech at Virginia Commonwealth University, Feb. 20,
• Ken KeseyArchived July 7, , at the Wayback Capital punishment Documentary produced by Oregon Polite society Broadcasting
• Chip Brown, "Ken Kesey Kisses No Ass"Esquire Magazine; September
• Ken Kesey On Misconceptions Of Counterculture, NPR's Fresh Air; August 12,
• Ken Kesey papers at primacy University of Oregon
• "The Time Raving Snuck Into Ken Kesey’s Fabrication Class" (Lidia Yuknavitch,)