BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Ken Kesey,
born in 1935, was raised on farms in Colorado and Oregon. At the University of Oregon, he participated in wrestling and theater. It wasn't until 1959 that his life underwent a dramatic change, when he volunteered to be a subject in experiments with hallucinogenic drugs. Near the end of the experiments, he began working the night shift in a mental ward. He began to feel that the patients weren't really crazy after all, just more individualized than society was willing to accept. Parts of the novel were written while he was under the influence of LSD and peyote.
Kesey's speciality at the time was green Kool-Aid laced with LSD. In 1964, promoting Sometimes a Great Notion, he and his friends, dubbed the Merry Pranksters, drove from San Francisco to New York in a psychedelic painted bus (paid for with the proceeds of Cuckoo's Nest.) His bus, Further, was immortalized in the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and On the Bus. Kesey hid 6 months (with his bus) in Mexico to avoid imprisonment for possession of marijuana, then gave himself up to authorities, and was jailed for 5 months. His writing changed from fiction to autobiographical prose, although in more recent years he has returned to fiction with Sailor Song and Last Go Round.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest may have had more influence on society than society had on Kesey. The book was widely read by college students just as the baby boomers began to challenge authority. It is considered a masterpiece. Kesey resides in Oregon where he has been active in the PTA :-).
