Official Ken Kesey Myspace

Ken Kesey (September 17, 1935 November 10, 2001) was an American author, best known for his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as a cultural figure whom is consided a link between the "beat generation" of the 1950s and the "hippies" of the 1960s. Kesey attended the University of Oregon's School of Journalism, where he received a degree in speech and communication in 1957. He was also an Olympic-caliber wrestler, and was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship in 1958 to enroll in the creative writing program at Stanford University, which he did the following year. At Stanford University in 1959, Kesey volunteered to take part in a study at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital on the effects of psychoactive drugs. These included LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and/or IT-290 (AMT). Kesey wrote many detailed accounts of his experiences with these drugs, both during the study and in years of private experimentation that followed. His role as a medical guinea pig inspired Kesey to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962. The success of this book, as well as the sale of his residence at Stanford, caused him to move to La Honda, California, 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). These parties were noted in some of Allen Ginsberg's poems and are also described in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The Merry Pranksters were collected around Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady (Fuck Ya!) , as well as main cohort Ken Babbs. They are remembered chiefly for travelling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus enigmatically labelled "Furthur." The Pranksters were heavy users of marijuana and LSD, and in the process of their journey they are said to have "turned on" many people whom they introduced to these drugs. The Pranksters' travels continued until 1969, when the bus (without Kesey) made it to the Woodstock rock festival. The original Prankster bus was returned to Kesey's rural home in Oregon. The Merry Pranksters are also the subject of a book by Tom Wolfe called The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The inspiration for Kesey's first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came from his work at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital on the night shift. There, Kesey often spent time talking to the patients, sometimes under the influence of the hallucinogenic drugs that he volunteered to experiment with. Kesey believed that these patients were not insane, but that society had pushed them out because they did not fit the conventional ideas of how people were supposed to act and behave. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was an immediate success. Kesey was arrested for possession of marijuana in 1966. He fled to Mexico in the back of a friend's car, an intentionally feeble attempt at disguise. When he later returned to the United States, Kesey was arrested and sent to jail. When he was released, 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. In 1997, Kesey reunited with the Merry Pranksters at a Phish concert during a performance of the song "Colonel Forbin's Ascent." It was one of his last public appearances. Kesey died on November 10, 2001.