Read Online The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe - Free Book Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
Tags: United States, General, science, Social Science, History, Psychology, Psychopathology, Addiction, Popular Culture, drug abuse, Hippies - United States, Hippies, drug addiction, Applied Sciences, Drug addiction - United States
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patients, and as the lines of the ball-point greasy creased into the paper the lines of their faces, he could—the interiors of these men came into the lines, the ball-point crevasses, it was the most incredible feeling, the anguish and the pain came right out front and flowed in the crevasses in their faces, and in the ball-point crevasses, the same—one! —crevasses now, black starling nostrils, black starling eyes, blind black starling geek cry on every face: "Me! Me! Me! Me! I am—Me!"—he could see clear into them. And—how could you tell anybody about this? they'll say you're a nut yourself—but afterwards, not high on anything, he could still see into people.
The novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was about a roustabout named Randle McMurphy. He is a big healthy animal, but he decides to fake insanity in order to get out of a short jail stretch he is serving on a work farm and into what he figures will be the soft life of a state mental hospital. He comes onto the ward with his tight reddish-blond curls tumbling out from under his cap, cracking jokes and trying to get some action going among these deadasses in the loony bin. They can't resist the guy. They suddenly want to do things. The tyrant who runs the place, Big Nurse, hates him for weakening .. . Control, and the System. By and by, many of the men resent him for forcing them to struggle to act like men again. Finally, Big Nurse is driven to play her trump card and finish off McMurphy by having him lobotomized.
But this crucifixion inspires an Indian patient, a schizoid called Chief Broom, to rise up and break out of the hospital and go sane: namely, run like hell for open country.
Chief Broom. The very one. From the point of view of craft, Chief Broom was his great inspiration. If he had told the story through McMurphy's eyes, he would have had to end up with the big bruiser delivering a lot of homilies about his down-home theory of mental therapy. Instead, he told the story through the Indian. This way he could present a schizophrenic state the way the schizophrenic himself, Chief Broom, feels it and at the same time report the McMurphy Method more subtly.
Morris Orchids! He wrote several passages of the book under peyote and LSD. He even had someone give him a shock treatment, clandestinely, so he could write a passage in which Chief Broom comes back from "the shock shop." Eating Laredo buds—he would write like mad under the drugs. After he came out of it, he could see that a lot of it was junk. But certain passages—like Chief Broom in his schizophrenic fogs—it was true vision, a little of what you could see if you opened the doors of perception, friends . . .
RIGHT AFTER HE FINISHED ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, Kesey sublet his cottage on Perry Lane and he and Faye went back up to Oregon. This was in June, 1961. He spent the summer working in his brother Chuck's creamery in Springfield to accumulate some money. Then he and Faye moved into a little house in Florence, Oregon, about 50 miles west of Springfield, near the ocean, in logging country. Kesey started gathering material for his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, which was about a logging family. He took to riding early in the morning and at night in the "crummies." These were pickup trucks that served as buses taking the loggers to and from the camps. At night he would hang around the bars where the loggers went. He was Low Rent enough himself to talk to them. After about four months of that, they headed back to Perry Lane, where he was going to do the writing.
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST WAS PUBLISHED IN FEBRUARY, 1962, and it made his literary reputation immediately:
"A smashing achievement"—Mark Schorer
"A great new American novelist"—Jack Kerouac
"Powerful poetic realism"—Life
"An amazing first novel"—Boston Traveler
"This is a first novel of special worth"—New York Herald Tribune
"His storytelling is so effective, his style so impetuous, his
The novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was about a roustabout named Randle McMurphy. He is a big healthy animal, but he decides to fake insanity in order to get out of a short jail stretch he is serving on a work farm and into what he figures will be the soft life of a state mental hospital. He comes onto the ward with his tight reddish-blond curls tumbling out from under his cap, cracking jokes and trying to get some action going among these deadasses in the loony bin. They can't resist the guy. They suddenly want to do things. The tyrant who runs the place, Big Nurse, hates him for weakening .. . Control, and the System. By and by, many of the men resent him for forcing them to struggle to act like men again. Finally, Big Nurse is driven to play her trump card and finish off McMurphy by having him lobotomized.
But this crucifixion inspires an Indian patient, a schizoid called Chief Broom, to rise up and break out of the hospital and go sane: namely, run like hell for open country.
Chief Broom. The very one. From the point of view of craft, Chief Broom was his great inspiration. If he had told the story through McMurphy's eyes, he would have had to end up with the big bruiser delivering a lot of homilies about his down-home theory of mental therapy. Instead, he told the story through the Indian. This way he could present a schizophrenic state the way the schizophrenic himself, Chief Broom, feels it and at the same time report the McMurphy Method more subtly.
Morris Orchids! He wrote several passages of the book under peyote and LSD. He even had someone give him a shock treatment, clandestinely, so he could write a passage in which Chief Broom comes back from "the shock shop." Eating Laredo buds—he would write like mad under the drugs. After he came out of it, he could see that a lot of it was junk. But certain passages—like Chief Broom in his schizophrenic fogs—it was true vision, a little of what you could see if you opened the doors of perception, friends . . .
RIGHT AFTER HE FINISHED ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, Kesey sublet his cottage on Perry Lane and he and Faye went back up to Oregon. This was in June, 1961. He spent the summer working in his brother Chuck's creamery in Springfield to accumulate some money. Then he and Faye moved into a little house in Florence, Oregon, about 50 miles west of Springfield, near the ocean, in logging country. Kesey started gathering material for his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, which was about a logging family. He took to riding early in the morning and at night in the "crummies." These were pickup trucks that served as buses taking the loggers to and from the camps. At night he would hang around the bars where the loggers went. He was Low Rent enough himself to talk to them. After about four months of that, they headed back to Perry Lane, where he was going to do the writing.
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST WAS PUBLISHED IN FEBRUARY, 1962, and it made his literary reputation immediately:
"A smashing achievement"—Mark Schorer
"A great new American novelist"—Jack Kerouac
"Powerful poetic realism"—Life
"An amazing first novel"—Boston Traveler
"This is a first novel of special worth"—New York Herald Tribune
"His storytelling is so effective, his style so impetuous, his
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