Kingwood College Library
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
By Ken Kesey 1935 - 2001
For more about the life and times of the author, watch
Ken Kesey: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Peggy Whitley (approx 5 min; requires
QuickTime.
Note: this may take a few minutes to load.)
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. He married his high school sweatheart and they had 3 children together. In 1959, when he volunteered to be a subject in experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, his life underwent a dramatic change. Near the end of the experiments, he began working the night shift in a mental ward. He started to feel that the patients were not really crazy after all, just more individualized than society was willing to accept. Parts of this novel were written while he was under the influence of LSD and peyote.
Kesey's specialty at the time was green Kool-Aid laced with LSD. In 1964, promoting his new book, 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 later years he 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. Until his death in 2001, Kesey resided in Oregon where he had been active in the PTA :-).
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talk . . . About Getting Started!HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The novel's secondary characters were based on real-life individuals whom Kesey met while working at the Veterans' Administration Hospital. As research for the novel, he worked the graveyard shift in the psychiatric ward and actually subjected himself to a real-life shock treatment. The setting of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest takes place at the end of the 1950s, when many of the nation's younger generation began to challenge conformity. Nurse Ratched personified the power and control exhibited by large government and businesses. The Beat Culture began at this time and continued with other countercultures and finally to the hippies of the 1960s.
Young Americans began to question those in power. They formed a subgroup in American society that historians termed the counterculture. This band of political protesters gave rise to the hippies, a collection of mostly young people dedicated to peace, love and the search for beauty of life. Kesey was one of those hooked on a new mind-altering drug known as LSD. LSD was considered both a blessing (medical treatment for mental disorders) and a curse (unpleasant reactions and addiction) for American society. LSD served as a unifying vehicle that would later define the entire counterculture of the 1960s.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was hailed as a major literary success. The movie starring Jack Nicholson as McMurphy won the 1975 Academy Award for Best Picture.
- What was happening in the 1960s? See our American Cultural History Site and Music 1950-2000 to set yourself in place.
