Ken Elton Kesey

Ken Elton Kesey 1935-2001, American novelist and counterculture figure, b. La Junta, Colo.; grad. Univ. of Oregon (1957), Stanford Univ. (1960). While a student he volunteered for a hospital study of mind-altering drugs, substances that were to shape much of his life and work. He also briefly worked as a psychiatric ward attendant, an experience pivotal to the creation of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962; film, 1975), his most famous novel, which details the struggle between rebellious individuality, represented by inmate R. P. McMurphy, and the forces of repression, personified by Nurse Ratched. Kesey's other books include the novels Sometimes a Great Notion, (1964; film, 1971), Sailor Song (1992), and Last Go Round (1994); and essays, stories, and children's books. He was also known as the leader of the Merry Pranksters, a group of travelers, stoked by LSD, who traversed the United States in a psychedelically decorated bus in 1964. Their exploits were described in Tom Wolfe 's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) and Kesey's The Further Inquiry (1990).

Bibliography: See studies by B. H. Leeds (1981), S. L. Tanner (1983), and P. Perry et al., ed. (2d ed. 1996).

Kesey, Ken (1935–2001), born in Colorado, graduated from the University of Oregon, later studied at Stanford, and once worked as a ward attendant in a mental hospital which provided background for his comic macabre novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), whose tone also animates his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), about a feud between two brothers in an Oregon lumber town. Kesey's Garage Sale (1973) collects diverse writings, mainly autobiographical, while Demon Box (1986) collects essays, poems, and stories. His loose life‐style during the '60s, touring around in a bus with his so‐called Merry Pranksters, was the subject of an essay by Tom Wolfe in his Electric Kool‐Aid Acid Test. The Further Inquiry (1990) is Kesey's own account of the Merry Pranksters period.