A look into the strange life and legacy of the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

Nest

Kesey’s Early Life

Ken Kesey was born in

Colorado, but grew up in

Oregon.

This also happens

to be where One Flew Over

The Cuckoo’s Nest takes

place.

The Oregon State Mental Hospital

Voted Most Likely to Succeed

as a Senior in High School

Kesey’s College Years

Ken went on to the University of Oregon wherehe became a star wrestlerand lead actor in collegeplays.

He married Faye, hishigh school sweetheartduring his freshman year.

After College

Ken and Faye went to Hollywood to try to land a part in a movie.

However, Ken couldn’t resist the urge to write and enrolled in Stanford in 1958 on a creative-writing fellowship.

The Move to Perry Lane

Ken and Faye moved into

a rundown house on Perry

Lane, a cluster of two-room

cottages inhabited by young,

promising intellectuals.

Ken’s best friend on Perry Lane told him about some experiments the local VA hospital was conducting with hallucinogenic drugs.

They paid Ken $75 a day to come in and lie down in a bed while they gave him a series of capsules of placebos, Ditran, and LSD.

The doctors had never taken LSD and couldn’t understand the effects and feelings. Ken managed to provide all his friends on Perry Lane with LSD.

Kesey’s Job on the Psych WardKen got a job covering the night shift at a psychiatric ward in order to write his first book, Zoo, which was never published.

Once he got there and started interacting with patients, he discovered the punishing abuse of power by the system.

Kesey’s inspiration for Cuckoo’s NestKen would come to workhigh on LSD in order to try to achieve a similar state of mind as hispatients.

It was during one of theseacid trips that he envisioned his narrator, Chief Broom, a deaf-mute, paranoid schizophrenic Native American mental patient.

Immediate SuccessOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the first book that Ken published (in 1962). The book was immediately adapted into a successful stage production a year later, and then became and Academy Award winning film, sweeping five major Oscar categories in 1975.

Kesey’s opinion of film

Jack Nicholson asRandle Patrick McMurphy

6’ 7” Will Sampson as Chief Bromden

Kesey wanted Gene Hackman to play

McMurphy

Ken was originally involved in creating the film, but left two weeks into production.

He claimed never to have seen the movie because of a dispute over the $20,000 he was initially paid for the film rights.

Ken was apparently angered by the fact that, unlike the book, the film was not narrated by the Chief Bromden character, and he disagreed with Jack Nicholson being cast as Randle McMurphy (even though Nicholson went on to win Best Actor)

The Move to La Honda, California

After the success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken and Faye moved to La Honda. His Perry Lane friends followed and their communal LSD culture continued.

They nicknamed themselves the Merry Pranksters.

After completing his second novel, Kesey and his Merry Pranksters bought an old school bus for $1500, painted it in Day-Glo colors and rigged it up with speakers, microphones, and recording equipment in order to rap off of the sounds along the way.

They drove across country getting high and recording home video footage for The Movie! and wore masks and little to no clothing on the trip, picking up hitchhikers and strangers to join in the experience.

Legal TroubleLess than a year later, Ken and his 13 Merry Pranksters were arrested for marijuana possession. Ken was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation.

While released on bond, Ken initiated his first Acid Test. It was a multimedia acid extravaganza with movie footage and asynchronous sounds being flashed in an enclosed area.

More Acid Tests

Ken would

recruit at

Grateful Dead

Concerts, and

the Dead even

came to the

second test after one of their shows.

During this time, Ken became a celebrity among the young American beatnik culture.

Ken Kesey

The Final Acid Test Participants

Avoiding Another ArrestIn order to mislead the police and avoid jail time after two subsequent marijuana arrests, Ken faked his own suicide, leaving a note with his abandoned truck near an oceanside cliff.

He escaped to Mexico, but when he returned to the United States eight months later, he was arrested and sent to prison for five months.

Kesey’s Later LifeShortly after being released from prison following the Mexico escape, Ken renounced his image as a drug hero. He said it was time to graduate to something else and moved to a farm in Oregon with Faye. They had 3 children. He died in 2001 at age 66 from liver cancer.

Faye Kesey by her husband and son’s gravestones

Kesey’s iconic statureKen and his Merry Prankster’s became known as the link between the Beatnik generation of the 50s and the hippies of the 60s. Although he published 11 books, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was by far his most well-known and successful literary work.

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