Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8278 in Books
• Published on: 1989-02-17
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. By taking On the Road's hero Neal Cassady as his driver on the cross-country revival tour and drawing on his own training as a magician, Kesey made Further into a bully pulpit, and linked the beat epoch with hippiedom. Paul McCartney's Many Years from Now cites Kesey as a key influence on his trippy Magical Mystery Tour film. Kesey temporarily renounced his literary magic for the cause of "tootling the multitudes"--making a spectacle of himself--and Prankster Robert Stone had to flee Kesey's wild party to get his life's work done. But in those years, Kesey's life was his work, and Wolfe infinitely multiplied the multitudes who got tootled by writing this major literary-journalistic monument to a resonant pop-culture moment.

Kesey's theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test" soirees that launched The Grateful Dead required Wolfe's Day-Glo prose account to endure (though Kesey's own musings in Demon Box are no slouch either). Even now, Wolfe's book gives what Wolfe clearly got from Kesey: a contact high. --Tim Appelo, Amazon.com

From the Back Cover
'I looked around and people's faces were distorted...lights were flashing everywhere...the screen at the end of the room had three or four different films on it at once, and the strobe light was flashing faster than it had been...the band was playing but I couldn't hear the music...people were dancing...someone came up to me and I shut my eyes and with a machine he projected images on the back of my eye-lids...I sought out a person I trusted and he laughed and told me that the Kool-Aid had been spiked and that I was beginning my first LSD experience...'

About the Author
Tom Wolfe grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and graduated from Washington and Lee University. He received his doctorate in American Studies from Yale University. Mr Wolfe worked as a reporter for the Springfield Union (Massachusetts), The Washington Post, and the New York Herald Tribune. His writing has also appeared in New York magazine, Esquire, and Harper's. He is the author of several works of non-fiction: The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Pump House Gang, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Text, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, The Painted Word, Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine, The Right Stuff, From Bauhaus to Our House and The Purple Decades, A Reader. His first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, was published in 1987. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Excellent account of psychedelic outlaw underculture in the '60s
Ken Keysey is a myth in his own time. The author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, the guru of LSD culture as the more gritty and real reflection of Timothy Leary (or I should rather say Leary was Keysey's reflection).

Given this, it is only right that he should be the central subject of a book written about this culture and time, which is in essence what the Electric Kool-aid Acid Test is.

This account describes the rise and fall of LSD culture from the early 1960s. Tom Wolfe, a prominent journalist of the time documents Keyseys journey from his early involvement in official LSD experiments and his establishment of an LSD community whose primary aim was to seek enlightenment using LSD as a tool, to Keysey's ultimate rejection of LSD.

This book is a testament to the charisma and strength of Keysey's character in his ability to lead his merry bunch through their escapades across America, outraging the local conservatives in doing so. Keysey's will and skill is put to the test from such tasks as wooing the cultural intelligentia of the day to the altogether more hazardous pursuit of entertaining the Hell's Angels.

There are some excellent scenes in the book, for example incorporating the person on whom Kerouac's "On The Road" hero Moriarty, is based upon, and also a description of the meeting between Keysey and Kerouac, where the egos of the two appear to clash in a "this town ain't big enough for two intellectual authors"-type scene.

My only criticism is that Wolfe sometimes appears a little star-struck by Keysey, who is clearly highly seductive. However, he manages to maintain enough objectivity to make this book a fascinating description of the culture and politics of the 1960's, as told through the inspiring anti-convention adventures and escapades of Keysey and his disciples. I cannot but give this book 5 stars as an account of the truth behind the pop myth of the 1960's psychedelic revolution.

Not only a great read but also a great reference work of the era
Where did the saying "You're either on the bus or you're off the bus" come from ?

Who were the real people in Kerouac's On The Road ?

How did The Grateful Dead create such awesome sounds ?

What did the Pranksters think about their meeting with The Hell's Angels ? (Hunter Thompson reported it in his book of the same name - this gives the other side of the same story)

How did The Beatles come up with the idea for their Magical Mystery Tour ?

The answer to these and many more questions about the acid culture of the 60s (when it was a lot safer to pop a tab) can be found in this great read. Highly recommended for anyone who was around at the time and can't remember much about it - also recommended for those who can remember and want a great trip down memory lane.

Far Out Man!
As somebody slightly obsessed with the major happenings of the sixties, but who missed the period by a good 10 years, I found this book compelling. I've heard stories for years by old hippies about their crazy travels, but nothing as lucid as Wolfe's excellent commentary on the Merry Pranksters. Kesey is painted as a zarathustra-esque messiah of hippiedom, leading his dedicated crew of followers into an awesome social experiment.....and not with small thanks to a little LSD! Slightly crazy, slightly dark at times, frequently funny, constantly fascinating. Wolfe seems to capture the idealistic notions of the pranksters' attempts to subvert society perfectly; as a reader you're literally bumping around the back of the bus with them. Oh for a big psychedelic school-bus!