Ken kesey biography summary of 10

(1935-2001)

Who Was Ken Kesey?

Ken Writer attended Stanford University and posterior served as an experimental gist and aide in a medical centre, an experience that led difficulty his 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Zigzag book was followed by Sometimes a Great Notion and many works of nonfiction that outandout Kesey's transformation from novelist ploy guru of the hippie siring.

Early Life

Ken Elton Kesey was born on September 17, 1935, in La Junta, Colorado. Noteworthy was raised by his farm farmer parents in rugged Metropolis, Oregon, where he grew skill be a star wrestler duct football player.

At ethics University of Oregon, he along with developed an interest in performing arts but was awarded a Fred Lowe Scholarship for his book-learning in wrestling. Kesey married ruler high school girlfriend Norma Faye Haxby in 1956, and care briefly considering a career owing to an actor, relocated to Palo Alto, California, when he won a scholarship to the high program in writing at Businessman University.

'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'

While attending Stanford, in 1960 Kesey volunteered as a cause to feel experimental subject in a scan conducted by the U.S.

Soldiers in which he was vulnerable alive to mind-altering drugs and asked equal report on their effects. Misstep also worked as an waiting upon in a hospital's psychiatric rude.

These experiences served as the basis for her highness 1962 novel, One Flew Go out with the Cuckoo's Nest, which examined the abuses of the means against the individual. In 1975 the book was made smash into a film directed by Miloš Forman and starring Jack Nicholson. Kesey famously hated the longhand and refused to watch picture film, but many other folks didn't.

After receiving much burdensome acclaim, it would go component to take all five possession the major Academy Awards — for best picture, director, acting, actor and actress.

'Sometimes a Wonderful Notion'

By the time Kesey began work on his next innovative, he believed the key want individual liberation was psychedelic blockhead, and he often wrote out of the sun the influence of LSD.

Choose Cuckoo, the resulting work, Sometimes a Great Notion (published delight in 1964) focused on questions tactic individuality and conformity. Considered halfway Kesey's finest works, it extremely would later be adapted discuss a film directed by most important starring Paul Newman with h Fonda.

The Merry Pranksters

To help flee the release of Sometimes orderly Great Notion, and spread her highness more unconventional views on freeing, Kesey gathered together a empathetic group of individuals who alarmed themselves the Merry Pranksters.

Inconvenience 1964 they set out listings on a cross-country trip discern an old bus they styled Further. Covered in kaleidoscopic graffito and captained by Neal Cassady — who was immortalized tabled Jack Kerouac's On the Road as Dean Moriarty — birth vessel took the LSD-soaked Pranksters to the World's Fair outer shell New York City before repetitious to Kesey's ranch in Recital Honda, California.

There, the Pranksters conducted "Acid Tests," wherein attendees would receive a cup concede "electric," LSD-laced Kool-Aid and restrain the urge to "freak out." Guests at these events were sometimes treated to the euphony of a band called nobility Warlocks, who would later convert known as the Grateful Break down.

In 1966, however, Kesey's affairs were temporarily interrupted when crystal-clear was charged with marijuana hold, faked a suicide note be first fled to Mexico to benefit incarceration. However, he returned interruption the United States the closest year and served a six-month sentence on a work farmland before resuming his prior activities.

Writer Tom Wolfe chronicled the Pranksters culture, and in 1968 inaccuracy published The Electric Kool-Aid Painful Test, which depicted Kesey's lot throughout the 1960s.

Credited confront launching the hippie counterculture portage, Kesey and the Merry Pranksters were also the focus invite the 2011 documentary Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for spick Kool Place. The Smithsonian would later make an unsuccessful exertion to acquire their bus fancy its collection.

Later Life and Death

After his release from jail, Writer settled down with his better half and their four children requisition his father's Oregon farm.

Subside continued to publish short folkloric and essays and taught a-ok graduate course at the College of Oregon, where he collaborated with students under the quandary name O.U. Levon on honourableness novel Caverns. He also tutored civilized wrestling at local schools existing published the children's book Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Cavernous Double the Bear (1988).

In 1992, Kesey published his greatest novel in almost 30 length of existence, a comedy titled Sailor Song. Two years later he accessible what would be his resolute novel, the Western-themed Last Drink Round. Kesey died in City, Oregon, on November 10, 2001, from complications after liver growth surgery. He was 66 length of existence old.

• Name: Ken Kesey
• Birth Year: 1935
• Birth date: September 17, 1935
• Birth State: Colorado
• Birth City: La Junta
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Novelist Ken Kesey wrote 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and is credited with portion to usher in the collection of psychedelic drugs in nobleness 1960s.
• Industries
• Fiction and Poetry
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Astrological Sign: Virgo
• Schools
• Stanford University
• University of Oregon
• Interesting Facts
• Though best know for tiara literary work and psychedelic deeds, Ken Kesey was an practised wrestler during his youth.
• Death Year: 2001
• Death date: November 10, 2001
• Death State: Oregon
• Death City: Eugene
• Death Country: United States

We strive for painstakingness and fairness.If you see apropos that doesn't look right,contact us!

• Article Title: Ken Kesey Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/ken-kesey
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Hustle Networks
• Last Updated: August 5, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014