| Name: |
Ken Kesey |
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[This entry was updated by Laura M. Zaidman (University of South Carolina, Sumter) from her update in the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography, volume 6, of the entry by Stephen L. Tanner (University of Idaho) in DLB 2: American Novelists Since World War II, and the entry by Ann Charters (University of Connecticut) in DLB 16: The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America.]
A writer who came of age on the West Coast during the late 1950s, Ken Kesey has been profoundly influenced by the Beats both in his life and in his work. Strictly speaking, he is not a Beat writer in his early books, although he admired Jack Kerouac and claims the influence of Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes, and William S. Burroughs on his prose style. Kesey is a pivotal figure between the Beats and the Hippies, the leader and chief chronicler of the activities of his associates, the Merry Pranksters, a group of friends including Neal Cassady who helped Kesey originate the "acid tests" that popularized the use of the drug LSD in psychedelic mixed-media "happenings" in California in the 1960s.
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