Although my classmates in a contemporary novel course rhapsodized over One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the author’s later role as a Merry Prankster advocating LSD use, I was fonder of Sometimes a Great Nation, which I read while living not all that far from its setting in the coastal mountains of Oregon. Sections from the unfinished Seven Prayers of Grandma Whittier were also tantalizing. Now I am wondering about his naming of the grandmother, as a nod to … Quaker?
Kesey is fascinating as a forceful, larger-than-life counterculture celebrity, even notoriety, from the Beat movement on. How could anyone begin to compress his activities into prose, either fiction or nonfiction?
Both of his novels were published by the time he was 30. Maybe he was just too busy living to continue.
Jnana's Red Barn 