"The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer—they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek the mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." Kesey
1935-2001 American author
He grew up in Springfield, right outside Eugene, Oregon. He met his future wife, Faye in high school and married her in their Freshman year at University of Oregon.
He might be placed midpoint between the Beat Generation of the 50's and the Hippies of the 60's. Graduated with a Journalism degree from University of Oregon and later Stanford University with a degree in creative writing. Upon leaving Stanford, Ken moved to a small town called La Honda, CA. It was here where he made friends with the members of the Grateful Dead and began to form the Merry Pranksters.
Wrote his most well known novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962. That book was later made into an Academy Award winning film starring Jack Nicholson. He followed it with Sometimes a Great Notion in 1964 (which was also made into a lesser known movie called Never give an Inch. It starred Henry Fonda and Paul Newman.) These two novels rank among the best of modern American Literature.
He used the profits from the Cuckoo's Nest to fund a trip across US in dayglow painted bus called Furthur, described in the best selling Tom Wolfe book: Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test with group called the Merry Pranksters. Among them was Ken Babbs. During the trip they did extensive filming on 16 mm film. This footage never saw the light of day for decades. In the 90's, the miracle of Digital Video editing allowed them to finally mix down the 1999 film called: Intrepid Traveller and His Band of Merry Pranksters Look for A Cool Place.
He was part of a government sanctioned research project that sought to test the effects of Psychedelic drugs like MKULTRA. He went on to experiment extensively with them including LSD and Mescaline. He was friends with Neal Cassady Influenced by Jack Kerouac. He asked Cassady to become a member of the Merry Pranksters which he did. It was Cassady who drove the bus Furthur most of the time on their cross country trip...as it were.
Bibliography:
Books:
Related Nodes:
Falls under the categories of Books that will induce a mindfuck and Books you loan out to expand friends' minds.
Remember, "Travel changes your brain"
Source:
http://www.ulster.net/~shady/keezintv.html
McClanahan, Ed, "Spit In The Ocean #7, All About Ken Kesey", Penguin Books, New York, 2003
http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/Biblio/KeseyBiblio.html
http://dir.salon.com/people/feature/2001/11/16/kesey_apprec/index.html
Last Updated 05.14.04