SOURCE: Tanner, Stephen L. “Kesey's Cuckoo's Nest and the Varieties of American Humor.” Thalia 13, nos. 1-2 (1993): 3-10.

In the following essay, Tanner correlates the humor of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to certain distinctive patterns in the tradition of American humor, focusing on parallels between nineteenth-century frontier humor and the urban technological society of mid-twentieth-century America.

Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) has enjoyed remarkable success. It is a widely acclaimed and popular-selling novel; a dramatic version starring Kirk Douglas appeared on Broadway and has been revived on college campuses; and a 1975 film version starring Jack Nicholson was a box-office success and received six Academy Awards. It has frequently been used as a text in a variety of disciplines: literature, psychology, sociology, history, medicine, and law. It is of special interest to students of humor not only because of its comedy but also because its...