SOURCE: Rosenblatt, Roger. “The Acid Test.” New Republic 207, no. 18 (26 October 1992): 41-3.

In the following review, Rosenblatt discounts Kesey's credibility as a “writer-writer” in Sailor Song, labelling Kesey instead as a “culture-writer,” which, Rosenblatt believes, compromises the novel's relevance for future generations.

A moment in Tom Wolfe's [sic] On the Bus comes rushing like a flaming flamingo: Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters are noising across America in their stupid, drug-fueled, day-glo, mantra-rapping, strobe-lit 1939 International Harvester school bus, when they pull up in Houston at the home of Larry McMurtry, who shyly emerges with his little boy at his side. Spotting the freaks, he is naturally confused, but he is also naturally good-natured, until a character whom Wolfe calls Stark Naked, because she is, leaps from the bus and scoops up McMurtry's little boy, shrieking, “Frankie! Oh Frankie! My little Frankie!” McMurtry, desperate to believe that he is still...