Ken (Elton) Kesey Biography

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Dictionary of Literary Biography on Ken (Elton) Kesey

Ken Kesey's diverse creative works provide a colorful testimony to his talent and myriad interests. His reputation as a writer depends mainly on his first two novels, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), both of which are significant imaginative and artistic achievements. Kesey's peregrinations in the 1960s with the group of friends known as the Merry Pranksters were exercises in hedonism, mind expansion, self-promotion, and social manipulation. The work that followed, from Kesey's Garage Sale (1973) and Demon Box (1986) to The Further Inquiry (1990), is mainly autobiographical, journalistic, or experimental, and of very uneven quality. The novel Caverns (1989) was written collaboratively by Kesey and thirteen graduate students in the creative writing program at the University of Oregon. The most recent novels, Sailor Song (1992) and Last Go Round (1994), retain the vitality and humor typical of Kesey's fiction, but they are highly stylized and lack the power and coherence of his early work.

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