Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey (1935–2001) was an American writer best known for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.[1]
Life and Works
Kesey was born September 17, 1935.[2] He came from a Baptist family that moved frequently and enjoyed fishing, hunting, boxing, hypotism, and ventriloquism as a child.[3]
He enrolled in Stanford University's creative writing class and began writing a novel about the growing Beat scene in California.[4] According to Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Kesey got the idea for the Chief Bromden character while under the influence of LSD. Kesey also worked in a mental hospital and secretly underwent electric shock treatment in order to better understand the characters of what he released in 1962 as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.[5] After his success, he drove his family and others around the country in a bus to experiment with LSD, a group that became called the Merry Pranksters and led to the birth of several unloved children.[6] He continued to write about his "psychedelic" lifestyle in Kesey's Garage Sale (1973), Demon Box (1986), and The Further Inquiry (1990), and got the voyage made into a movie, Magic Trip.[7]
His "Merry Prankster" life made him the irresponsible father of four children by two single woman, after which he spent time and jail, got a liver tumor and died of surgical complications on November 10, 2001.[8]
See also
References
- ↑ The New York Public Library Student's Desk Reference. Prentice Hall: New York, 1991.
- ↑ http://www.biography.com/people/ken-kesey-9363911
- ↑ http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Ka-M/Kesey-Ken.html
- ↑ https://www.pbs.org/opb/thesixties/topics/culture/newsmakers_3.html
- ↑ https://explore.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/show/sixties/walkthrough/kenkesey
- ↑ http://literary-destinations.com/authors/ken-kesey/biography
- ↑ "Kesey, Ken." Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
- ↑ http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/ken-kesey-3369.php