SOURCE: Bowden, Charles. “The Magic Bus.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (21 October 1990): 1, 7.

In the following review, Bowden contrasts Kesey's recollections in The Further Inquiry with those of Paul Perry and Ken Babbs in On the Bus.

There was a bus.

You were either on the bus or off the bus.

In the summer of 1964, Ken Kesey and some friends boarded a 1939 International Harvester school bus named Furthur or Further (the spelling varied). The sides screamed with swirls of bright paint, a style soon to be called psychedelic; the back sported a deck and motorcycle, and a turret punched through the roof. The vehicle was armed with endless supplies of movie film, an intricate sound system that could broadcast and record whatever interesting decibels happened by, and a larder of LSD and marijuana. At the wheel was Neal Cassady, a.k.a. Dean Moriarty, the phantom helmsman of a...