Ken Elton Kesey was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a 1968 nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe written in the New Journalism literary style. By 1970, this style began to be referred to as Gonzo Journalism, a term coined for the work of Hunter S. Thompson. The book presents a firsthand account of the experiences of Ken Kesey and a group of psychedelic enthusiasts, known as the Merry Pranksters, who traveled across the United States in a colorfully-painted school bus they called Furthur. Kesey and the Pranksters became famous for their use of psychedelic drugs to achieve expansion of their consciousness. The book chronicles the Acid Tests and encounters with notable figures of the time, and describes Kesey's exile to Mexico and his arrests.
The Merry Pranksters were followers of American author Ken Kesey. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties, and giving out LSD. During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the 1960s cultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white, and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and documents a 1966 trip on Furthur from Mexico through Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend the novelist Larry McMurtry. Kesey was in flight from a drug charge at the time.
Furthur is a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 to carry his "Merry Band of Pranksters" cross-country, filming their counterculture adventures as they went. The bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test but, due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, footage of the journey was not released as a film until the 2011 documentary Magic Trip.
La Honda is a census-designated place (CDP) in southern San Mateo County, California, United States. The population was 979 at the 2020 census. It is located in the Santa Cruz Mountains between the Santa Clara Valley and California's Pacific coast. La Honda is near the La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve and State Route 84 on the ocean side of the Coastal Range.
Wakonda or Waconda may refer to:
Ken Babbs is a famous Merry Prankster who became one of the psychedelic leaders of the 1960s. He along with best friend and Prankster leader, Ken Kesey, wrote the book Last Go Round. Babbs is best known for his participation in the Acid Tests and on the bus Furthur.
Who'll Stop the Rain is a 1978 American crime war film directed by Karel Reisz and starring Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty, and Anthony Zerbe. It was released by United Artists and produced by Herb Jaffe and Gabriel Katzka with Sheldon Schrager and Roger Spottiswoode as executive producers. The screenplay was by Judith Rascoe and Robert Stone, based on Stone's novel Dog Soldiers (1974), the music score by Laurence Rosenthal, and the cinematography by Richard H. Kline. The movie was entered in the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.
Sailor Song is a 1992 novel written by Ken Kesey. The only work of long fiction solely written by Kesey after Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), Sailor Song depicts the lives of the residents of Kuinak, a small town in Alaska, thirty years in the future – the 2020s.
Stamper is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Kernville is an unincorporated community in Lincoln County, Oregon, United States. It is located near the intersection of U.S. Route 101 and Oregon Route 229, where the Siletz River enters Siletz Bay. There are two communities, known as "old" and "new" Kernville, in close proximity. Old Kernville is considered a ghost town.
Sometimes a Great Notion is a 1971 American drama film directed by Paul Newman and starring Newman, Henry Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, and Lee Remick. The cast also includes Richard Jaeckel in an Academy Award-nominated performance.
Mo's Restaurants is an American restaurant chain located on the Oregon Coast and headquartered in Newport, Oregon. Mo's are named after their original owner Mohava "Mo" Niemi, who was once described as "the stuff of legend in Newport".
Caverns is a 1989 novel written collaboratively as an experiment by Ken Kesey and a creative writing class that he taught at the University of Oregon. The cover of the book says it was written by O.U. Levon—the name of this supposed author, spelled backwards, is "novel U.O.". The full list of authors is: Robert Blucher, Ben Bochner, James Finley, Jeff Forester, Bennett Huffman, Lynn Jeffress, Ken Kesey, Neil Lidstrom, H. Highwater Powers, Jane Sather, Charles Varani, Meredith Wadley, Lidia Yukman and Ken Zimmerman.
The culture of Oregon has had a diverse and distinct character from before European settlement until the modern day. Some 80 Native American tribes were living in Oregon before the establishment of European American settlements and ultimately a widespread displacement of the local indigenous tribes. Trappers and traders were the harbingers of the coming migration of Europeans. Many of these settlers traveled along the nationally renowned Oregon Trail, with estimates of around 53,000 using the trail between 1840 and 1850.
Magic Trip is a 2011 American documentary film directed by Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney, about Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and the Merry Pranksters.
A gyppo or gypo logger is a logger who runs or works for a small-scale logging operation that is independent from an established sawmill or lumber company. The gyppo system is one of two main patterns of historical organization of logging labor in the Pacific Northwest United States, the other being the "company logger".
Lee Quarnstrom was an American journalist, executive editor of Larry Flynt’s Hustler Magazine, and a Beatnik. He was a core member of the Merry Band of Pranksters, a group loosely led by novelist Ken Kesey.
The Storyteller, also known as the Ken Kesey Memorial, is an outdoor bronze sculpture by Pete Helzer, installed at Kesey Square in Eugene, Oregon, in the United States. Unveiled in 2003, it depicts American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure Ken Kesey reading to his three grandchildren, Kate Smith, Caleb Kesey and Jordan Smith. Plaques on the base of the sculpture contain excerpts from Kesey's novels One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and Sometimes a Great Notion (1964).
