I first attempted to read this a couple weeks ago but I wasn't feeling it. I thought to myself, "Hmm, it is much more interesting to read Kesey than to read ABOUT Kesey," so I put the book down and started reading other things. But I am not a man who likes to be defeated by a book, so I picked it up again and was totally surprised at how much more I enjoyed it this time around. Never trust a prankster! Maybe it's a nice contrast to my boring office job, what with all the day glo and acid and living free. The hippy lifestyle fascinates me, as elements of it both attract and repel me. There's something so appealing about rejecting to live a normal boring life, but then there's something so pathetic about achieving nothing, taking a lot of drugs, and living in filthy communal conditions.

This book isn't about hippies in general, but rather about a group of proto-hippies who were living that kind of life before it became mainstream- hipster hippies I guess. Ken Kesey, acclaimed author, participates in a drug study and discovers LSD. Loving the amazing effects it has on his mind, he begins taking it regularly and begins developing a gang of friends who get into it as well. Kesey buys some property in La Honda, California and the gang all move up there, name themselves the Merry Pranksters, and buy a school bus which they decorate with wild Day Glo paint. They make a road trip to New York on the bus, film a 40-hour movie along the way, and freak out pretty much everyone they encounter. The Merry Pranksters are actually huge trolls. They troll the people of America, the police, and even an anti-Vietnam march. They make friends with the Hells Angels (another trollish move) and then start throwing big acid bashes (basically what raves are today), which help bring LSD from the underground to the mainstream. But then Kesey gets busted for marijuana possession twice and ends up fleeing to Mexico. While there, Kesey has a realization during a lightning storm that in order to move forward the group must move beyond acid. He then returns to California, to spread the message, but things have changed. The hippy lifestyle became mainstream and the new acid heads had no interest in giving acid up. Kesey realized what seems to be the problematic paradox with acid- it gives you these divine, profound spiritual insights, but then when you're off acid they don't seem to mean anything. It's like without the drugs they aren't real. Kesey learned acid opens a door to a different type of consciousness, but he didn't want to have to live in a circle of relying on the drugs to get him back there. You cannot move forward living in a circle. Acid can do wondrous things to your mind, but ultimately it is a false sense of enlightenment. The group graduates off acid, and then they kind of disband and do their own thing. It was LSD that really brought them together and fuelled their wild lifestyle. Kesey even returned to writing, a medium he had abandoned while on LSD.

Wolfe understood that a straight-up formal typical biography wouldn't suit the wackiness of his subject matter, so he takes a lot of risks with his writing. Sometimes they pay off, and the loose, druggy prose helps convey what he's talking about. But other times he's not very successful, ie. any time that he attempts to write poetry, and it can just get a little ::::: awkward. I appreciate that the square New York journalist tried to make his writing as interesting as his subject, but I can understand how this approach could be really off-putting to readers. I like how Wolfe kept a lot of historical/cultural perspectives in focus. It's interesting to compare the newer countercultural 60s attitude with that of the beats. Allen Ginsberg and On The Road inspiration Neal Cassady make appearances in this, especially Cassady who is a core member of the pranksters. The concept of what was cool shifted, from what kinds of drugs people used (amphetamines to psychedelics), what kind of music people listened to (jazz to acid rock ie. The Grateful Dead), even people's attitude on war (ie. anti-war protest rallies going out of style-> apathy). All of these things were heavily influenced by Kesey and the Pranksters. The chapter about the Beatles is really funny, as the Pranksters want them to come to visit them following their concert, which of course doesn't happen, but over the years the Beatles embraced what the Pranksters were about, ie. taking acid, making psychedelic music, and The Magical Mystery Tour which sounds a lot like what the Pranksters did.

It's a well-structured novel, as Wolfe sets up the beginning with Kesey's plan to graduate from acid following his exhile and then goes back to the past to chronologically lead up to how they got to that point. Kesey with his country charm is so whack and brilliant at the same time. The Pranksters make a pretty fun cast of characters, with upfront Mountain Girl, techy Babbs (yeah! yeah! right! right! right!), Kesey's mysteriously domestic & demure wife, Faye, neurotic Sandy, and good old Cassady, always trying to break that 1/30th gap between life and our experience of it. If the gap between living life and experiencing it prevents us from truly ever living "in the Now" that means what we think is life is just a movie, and we all are starring in our own movie with our own script. The Pranksters sure had some wild movies going on.

Despite their ideas of living free, there definitely were tensions in the group dynamic. Kesey never claimed to be a leader and called himself the "un-navigator" but he was always in control of what was going on. The Pranksters had a real with-us-or-against us mentality, that they described as, "You're either on the bus, or you're off it." Sandy seems to be the one who struggled the most with this dynamic and left the group following a mental breakdown, only to return. I really liked his revenge at the end when he goes down to Mexico to take back his stereo equipment. But he eerily tells Wolfe that he will always be on the bus. Wolfe makes some interesting comparisons between religion and the Pranksters and how Kesey was like their religious leader. Though they were not interested in typical religious concerns, their group had a charismatic leader, existed on the fringes of society, and revolved around a new experience that they wanted to share with the rest of the world.

Overall, this is a fun romp through the 60s. I don't think the Prankster's ideas died with the end of the hippy era, but continue to live now especially in EDM/rave culture, even down to the neon colours! This book makes me want to try acid, but it also makes me never want to try acid, ya know? The Pranksters can be frustrating, but at least they're pretty entertaining! ( )

A snapshot of one cohort of 1960s west-coast American youth culture from the inside. It's a surprisingly narrow, self-referencing group: I had forgotten how consistently the word 'spade' was used for every black person that the participants interacted with (employed 29 times, apparently). This book, along with the avid self-documentation of Kesey's entourage, made the names of some of the handful of characters well-known to a subset of the American counterculture. Wolfe's book, though, is too long, myopically self-absorbed, and written in a style that soon becomes tedious. ( )

You’re either on the bus or off the bus.

This novel is unique. I can appreciate the efforts and how it’s written. Few authors can write like this and do it well. That being said, it was hard to focus on at times.

You’re either on the bus or off the bus...and I guess I’m just off the bus. ( )

Finally finished the bastard---it was a real slog. I'm sure the writing is some people's cup of tea, but not mine.

The most interesting part of it, and the only part that has stayed with me strongly, was the description of how it all went sour---the point where the civil rights movement stopped being cool and was dropped in favor of drugs. Definitely a warning. ( )

Wolfe has strong opinions about various social phenomena, interesting to read whether you agree with him or not. He seemed to think, for example, that clothes a person wore were more important than their ideas or their actions. That's all I can recall about this book so long after reading it. ( )