Ken Kesey (fwd) (NZC)

[Jeremy Mixer <mixer@xxxxxxxx>]

Some sad  news about an important figure of the 60's

Jeremy

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- ---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 08:20:33 EST
From: Pat <Patranoid@xxxxxxx>
Reply-To: BHS@xxxxxxxxxx
To: BHS@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Ken Kesey

:(

A couple of obituaries.

<<Novelist Ken Kesey, 66, Dies

By JEFF BARNARD
.c The Associated Press


GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - Ken Kesey, who railed against authority in ``One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' and orchestrated an LSD-fueled bus ride that
helped immortalize the psychedelic 1960s, died Saturday. He was 66.

Kesey died at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene, two weeks after cancer
surgery to remove 40 percent of his liver.

After studying writing at Stanford University, Kesey gained fame in 1962 with
``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' followed quickly with ``Sometimes a
Great Notion'' in 1964. He went 28 years before publishing his third major
novel.

With Neal Cassady, hero of Jack Kerouac's beat generation classic, ``On The
Road,'' behind the wheel, and a pitcher of LSD-spiked Kool-Aid in the
refrigerator, Kesey led a group of friends known as the Merry Pranksters on a
1964 trip to the New York World's Fair. The journey was documented in Tom
Wolfe's 1968 account, ``The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.''

``There was a lot of the frontiersman in him, an unwillingness to accept
conventional answers to a lot of profound questions,'' said Pulitzer Prize
winning novelist Larry McMurtry, who was in a Stanford writing seminar with
Kesey. ``We argued and debated a lot of things. But I never would not listen
to him, even if I thought some of what he said was gobbledygook, because
there would always be the perception of genius if you waited him out.''

When the Los Angeles Times honored Kesey's lifetime of work with the Robert
Kirsh Award in 1991, Charles Bowden wrote that ``Anyone trying to get a
handle on our times had better read Kesey. And unless we get lucky and things
change, they're going to have to read him a century from now too.''

``Sometimes a Great Notion,'' widely considered Kesey's best book, tells the
saga of the Stamper clan, rugged independent loggers carving a living out of
the Oregon woods under the motto, ``Never Give A Inch.'' It was made into a
movie starring Henry Fonda and Paul Newman.

But ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' became much more widely known because
of a movie that Kesey hated. It tells the story of R.P. McMurphy, who feigned
insanity to get off a prison farm, only to be lobotomized when he threatened
the authority of the mental hospital.

The 1974 movie swept the Academy Awards for best picture, best director, best
actor and best actress, but Kesey sued the producers because it took the
viewpoint away from the character of the schizophrenic Indian, Chief Bromden.

Kesey based the story on experiences working at the Veterans Administration
hospital in Menlo Park, Calif., while attending Wallace Stegner's writing
seminar at Stanford. Kesey also volunteered for experiments with LSD.

Another member of the Stegner seminar, poet, essayist and novelist Wendell
Berry, keeps a picture of Kesey, himself, and friend Ken Babbs on his desk in
Port Royal, Ky. The photo was taken during a visit last fall to Oregon.

``He was one of the few people I ever knew who could stand straight up
without putting his hands in his pockets or leaning on anything,'' Berry
said. ``He was freestanding in that way, if you know what I mean. That told a
lot about him.

``He was a man, as far as I could tell, totally without pretense. He never
was pretending to be somebody he wasn't. And he never pretended to be the man
he was,'' Berry said.

After ``Cuckoo's Nest,'' Kesey continued to write short autobiographical
fiction, magazine articles and children's books, but didn't produce another
major novel until ``Sailor Song'' in 1992, his long-awaited Alaska book,
which he described as a story of ``love at the end of the world.''

``This is a real old-fashioned form,'' he said of the novel. ``But it is sort
of the Vatican of the art. Every once in a while you've got to go get a
blessing from the pope.''

Kesey considered pranks part of his art, and in 1990 took a poke at the
Smithsonian Institution by announcing he would drive his old psychedelic bus
to Washington, D.C., to give it to the nation. The museum recognized the bus
as a new one, with no particular history, and rejected the gift.

In a 1990 interview with The Associated Press, Kesey said it had become
harder to write since he became famous.

``Famous isn't good for a writer. You don't observe well when you're being
observed,'' he said.

In 1990, Kesey returned to the University of Oregon - where he had earned a
bachelor's degree in journalism - to teach novel writing. With each student
assigned a character and writing under the gun, the class produced
``Caverns,'' under the pen name OU Levon, or UO Novel spelled backward.

Among his proudest achievements was seeing ``Little Tricker the Squirrel
Meets Big Double the Bear,'' which he wrote from an Ozark mountains tale told
by his grandmother, included on the 1991 Library of Congress list of
suggested children's books.

``I'm up there with Dr. Seuss,'' he crowed.

Fond of performing, Kesey sometimes recited the piece in top hat and tails
accompanied by an orchestra, throwing a shawl over his head while assuming
the character of his grandmother reciting the nursery rhyme, ``One Flew Over
the Cuckoo's Nest.''

Born in La Junta, Colo., on Sept. 17, 1935, Kesey moved as a young boy in
1943 from the dry prairie to his grandparents' dairy farm in Oregon's lush
Willamette Valley.

After serving four months in jail for a marijuana bust in California, he set
down roots in Pleasant Hill in 1965 with his high school sweetheart, Faye,
and reared four children. Their rambling red barn house with the big
Pennsylvania Dutch star on the side became a landmark of the psychedelic era,
attracting strangers in tie-dyed clothing seeking enlightenment.

Furthur rusted away in a boggy pasture while Kesey raised beef cattle.

Kesey's son Jed, killed in a 1984 van wreck on a road trip with the
University of Oregon wrestling team, was buried in the back yard. Kesey also
wrestled in college.

Kesey was diagnosed with diabetes in 1992.

In a recorded message on Kesey's office phone, Babbs said: ``Ken Kesey, a
great husband, father, granddad and friend. Done in by a bum liver. As
always, he gave it a great fight, but his body pulled its last dirty trick
and done him in. If he has one legacy it is for us the living to carry on
with courage, compassion, generosity and love.''

On the Net:

Kesey information: http://www.intrepidtrips.com

AP-NY-11-10-01 2122EST
>>

<<
Author, Counterculture Icon Ken Kesey Dead at 66

By Bruce Olson


EUGENE, Oregon (Reuters) - Ken Kesey, whose 1962 novel "One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest" celebrated rebellion against rigid authority and whose
exploits inspired the '60s hippie movement, died on Saturday, his family
said. He was 66.

"He just snuck away," said his son, Zane Kesey.

"As usual he did things his own way. Even in dying, he did a really good
job."

All his immediate family were by his side when he died at 3 a.m. PST (6 a.m.
EST) at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene from complications from liver cancer.
His condition was aggravated by diabetes and a minor stroke he suffered four
years ago.

Kesey won fame both as an exuberant pop impresario who helped launch the
consciousness-bending Age of Aquarius and as a serious novelist compared to
Philip Roth and Joseph Heller.

His early novels, "Cuckoo's Nest" and "Sometimes a Great Notion" (1964)
presented the struggle against conformity in heroic terms for a generation of
readers rebelling against the rigidity of the Eisenhower Era.

In a legendary 1964 trip, Kesey rolled across the United States in a 1939 bus
painted in psychedelic colors called "Furthur." With beat hero Neal Cassady
at the wheel, Kesey oversaw the Merry Pranksters, a group that specialized in
LSD parties and whose zany exploits became the basis for Tom Wolfe's 1968
book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."

Inspired by Kesey and LSD guru Timothy Leary, with the music of Bob Dylan and
the Grateful Dead in the background, millions of young Americans dropped acid
and started a cultural revolution that spread around the world.

Zane Kesey said, "The rumor is that the bus was put in the Smithsonian, but
that was just another prank. It's still out in our yard. We'd never give it
up."

He said Kesey spent a last afternoon on Monday at his farm in Pleasant Hill,
Oregon, near Eugene.

'SAYING GOODBYE'

"He was doing really well and he came home. It was a beautiful day and he
just walked around, then he lay down on his back on the porch and looked up
at the sky for a while. It was like he was saying goodbye."

"He had a full life, that's for sure. He didn't just sit around," the son,
who is 40, added.

Kesey died with a major project in the works, a film taken during the
Pranksters bus trip. Two parts have been finished and were being sold through
Kesey's Website www.key-z.com.

His son also said Kesey had several unpublished works, including the
completion to his partially published "Seven Prayers of Grandma Whittier" and
a book he wrote while he was in jail for four months for a marijuana bust in
the mid-60s.

His son said "he was always writing. He was the total archivist. Everything
was videotaped or filmed."

Zane said he helped out in the Thunder Machine, a crazed amalgam of sounds
once featured in Grateful Dead concerts."

"We'd get together on the weekends and play the Thunder Machine," said Phil
Dietz, who calls himself "the last Prankster" and who lives near Kesey.

The machine includes an old Thunderbird fender, piano strings, a smoke
machine and other mixing gear and was a touchstone for Prankster jam sessions
and featured in Dead concerts.

"Cuckoo's Nest" was a critical and financial success and became a play in
1963. Milos Forman directed a film version in 1975 that earned Oscars for him
and best actor Jack Nicholson, best actress Louise Fletcher and the award for
best picture.

Kesey died just a week after fellow Prankster Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, who passed
away of a heart attack at age 59. Leary and Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry
Garcia have also died in recent years.

Zane Kesey said plans were underway for "a big service" and said many of
Kesey's friends had flown into Eugene to be with the merriest prankster at
his death.

Kesey is also survived by his wife, Faye, his daughters, Shannon and
Sunshine, and three grandchildren.

13:42 11-10-01
>>

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