The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

I almost never write Amazon reviews, but I wanted to make an exception for this audiobook, because of how much I loved it. The story and writing is beautiful, but the voice acting by Luke Daniels is really superb. I think I enjoyed the book more than I would have if I had read it, due to the personas infused by Daniels into each of the characters. The tone of the book also has a mixed ironic / serious flavor - you never really know if Wolfe thinks this people are a serious social / political movement, or just a bunch of goofballs - and Daniels pulls off that ambivalence excellently.

This book is around 400 pages and a very detailed history, many stories, and it's hard to remember all the facts, you'll have to read the book yourself for that. The story is of the "Intrepid Travelers," Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, a communal group of acid ingesters who were the progenitors of the acid consciousness in the California, in the US, in the world's consciousness of awareness . . . "your either on the bus or off the bus." It was the influential chemists, Al Hubbard, Dr. Spaulding and the psychologists, Timothy Leary and Richard Albert, the Harvard psychology professors, who discovered for themselves psylobilin and with Michael Hollingshead and Albert Hoffman, LSD and subsequently held experiments using the right set and setting with experienced psychedelic guides. Yet to this the Merry Pranksters would say, "f**k that!" because they were from a different movie of living; in the now, the unserene and lurid art, your brain being your only guide, not some experienced taker and specific setting for a safe non-freak-out trip (and there were a lot of "freak-outs" from many young, emotionally inexperienced). And the acid influenced cultural movement they began in the early 1960's. It was Leary and Albert who endorsed the "set and setting," the intellectual approach or non-organizational religious approach, the religious experience of the mystics, in their dialogue with acid and mushrooms. With Kesey and the Pranksters it was spontaneous, wild party kind of living in Day-Glow colors, in the multimedia sound and movie. The Pranksters account starts in North Beach on Perry Lane, which becomes a major hang out for all sorts and eventually ends up in a cottage near La Honda, where the loud party of outlandish, Day-Glo painted woods - rigged with microphones and massive sound equipment, in the communal life takes on a new meaning. The Hell's Angels befriend the Pranksters and there are stories of personalities, telepathic and psychic connections and synchronicity in new fields of human life, the overmind, the collective unspoken mind of the psychedelic group. The religious realm of mystical awareness as in the game of I-Ching and dream wars. The Jungian "synchronicity" seemed to occur uncanningly many times, as their bus out of gas in the middle of nowhere only to have a tanker pull up and fuel them from nowhere. The sign on their door welcoming the Hell's Angels to end up having them and succeeding in their prankster madness. The sign on their door welcoming the Beatles, did not synchronize them to appear, but what did was having Oswley appear, the famous acid maker, who in the ways of synchronistic noncausal effect, was responsible for the finest acid which spread to England, the acid that brought the Beatles to experience the unspoken mind which ended them up traveling by bus across the English countryside with cameras and microphones. Imagine a Day-Glo painted bus, the magic bus, with Day-Glo painted people and clothes, tripping on acid traveling from California to the New York World's Faire with music blasting, a freak show on wheels, all in the year 1964! And Neil Cassidy (Jack Kerouac's buddy and drive from On The Road) driving the bus!! And their trip to the legendary Millbrook, thinking it would be some historic meeting with Leary and the Pranksters, but instead it was the mystical religious and intellectuals verses the wild party, American flag draped, painted, loud blaring music, party animals of psychedelic madness. I think it relates to the age and the introvert and/or extrovert type personalities that played the large part. It was actually Stewart Brand who thought up the great Trip Festival of January 1966. The series of acid test parties held by Kesey and the Pranksters helped spawn the movement of higher consciousness, all held at the last minute, the same day notification was put, and the Pranksters playing their instruments, then finding a local band, the warlocks - later known as the Grateful Dead - to play and Roy Seburn's light shows at the acid tests. It was the acid test held in a Unitarian church where the Kool-Aid was spiked, unknowingly to those attending. It was not teachings in the stiff, reverent language and texts of scholarly limnings found in various religions being taught but instead an aura, a religious experience, an awareness that flashed deeper than cerebration, the tradition of the great prophets. People like the beats Allen Ginsberg and his entourage and Neil Cassidy were there. As this spread, so the acid tests, later without Kesey and Haight Ashbury became the scene. Later on Kesey gets busted twice for weed and is on the run from the law, to Mexico and back until caught - he was in their movie that time, fortunately most charges dropped. A lot to read of the characters and generally a great book to get an idea of a unique and special time and place in history where a much larger degree of freedom existed for the white middle class with the ability to gain other realms of consciousness available for the taking. A great pictorial book on this is "On The Bus" by Paul Perry, Michael Schwartz, Neil Ortenberg & Ken Babbs.

I give this non-fiction book about the brilliant author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Signet) and the early day of the hippies, four stars and here's why: In most areas of my life I am organized. That is not the case when it comes to my reading pattern. It is rather chaotic. I'm not one of those people who sit down at the beginning of the year, line up the books I am going to read in a corner of the bookshelf, and start reading them in order. I usually have a general idea of the book I want to read next and despite my best laid plans, if I like the book in hand it inevitably leads me on to some other book I am unfamiliar with as I follow the trail through the literary forest until I step off a cliff or the trail comes to a dead end and I have to follow the bookmarks that I dropped along the way to lead me back out of the forest. And The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is no exception. What made me follow the trail of this nonfiction book with the bombastic title when I rarely read nonfiction? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--one of my favorite books of the twentieth century--is to blame. So it was a bird that I followed into the forest. I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 2013 after seeing the movie of the same name a decade earlier. You can read my review here [...]. When I finished I wanted to learn more about the high-artist (no pun intended) named Ken Kesey------ ------the straight-laced Stanford student who showed up one day at a government funded LSD experiment to earn $25 and ended up promoting the drug like no other in the fledgling days of the hippies. Ken Kesey decides to paint a school bus in Day-Glo colors and drive it across country with his merry band of pranksters. That's where Tom Wolfe comes in. The (pre-novelist) journalist followed those merry band of pranksters on their trip and recorded their adventures in in the 1968 book: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Why the crazy title? Well you will have to read the book. But what is not to like about the title? And speaking of crazy, the slapdash way Tom Wolfe writes in the book gives one the early impression that he is trying to capture the frenetic, drug fueled pace of the pranksters, which he verifies with an author's note at the end. He does a fine job of it, too. At times, however, he sacrifices clarity to accomplish this. New people pop in and out of scenes, never to be heard from again. There is often little setup to events that happen in the book. Poooooooof! Zaaaaamoooooo! Kablaaaaam! People come and go. Drug busts. Misery. Ecstasy. All on the same page. The bus rolls on in a Day-Glo sheen. The drugs flow. Tie-dye is invented and the hippie generation is ushered in thanks to Ken Kesey and his merry band of pranksters. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a pure rush of literary adrenaline by a journalist in full command of the English language and every crazy symbol found on the ASCII keyboard as if there is no shortage of how many colons can be strung together even though we know that the colon is an endangered species in the English language. Why? Because Tom Wolfe used most of them in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The book is recommended as it is part of America's culture in the sixties and so is the movie Ken Kesey and the pranksters filmed of the bus tour-- Magic Trip [HD ]. I am watching it now. But what I am enjoying most are Ken Kesey's interesting comments about the making of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, not the least of which is that he wrote the first pages high on peyote. And we all know how Edgar Allan Poe and other early literary pioneers have been portrayed for taking hallucinogenics as portrayed in Coffee With Poe . Let's hope the general perception turns out better for Ken Kesey as time passes.

I thought this was a great book. Getting the inside scoop on this historical piece of history and wild guys and gals that made up The Merry Pranksters was extremely valuable to me personally. After reading many books of both the Beat Generation as well as the Hippie Era including a lot of works focusing on the bands, the signature artists of those times, this book is so important regarding the gap between the Beats and the Hippies. This book isn’t sugar coated too much, so it’s raw, honest and exploratory. Learning in good detail about the Pranksters main/notable people, their ties to society and in contrast, their anti-establishment attitudes and spontaneous actions and unspoken rules, is to say the least entertainingly exciting. These folks were a large part in making the mid to late 60’s what they were. As a Grateful Dead lover/DeadHead, it was more than enthusiastic learning about their late entry in this story, along with some amazing figures of the times including Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Ramrod, Neil Cassidy and of course, Ken Kesey (among many other critical historical persons who all had their part in shaping the counterculture gapping generations). A very quick read, and interesting for me to read about the pioneering psychedelic warriors, how they were “Turned On” and how they spread the message to the masses in such unusual form. The rebels of their time, along with some truly EPIC pranks, parties and perseverance. What I really enjoyed about this book is that it doesn’t highlight a bunch of happy go luck good times. It shows the truly raw side of the bunch. It has some incredibly gloomy details that emerge as a result of being together as a wild “family”, with some eye opening realizations that are important for readers to know. That point being that even in best of times follows the worst of times. There is no light without darkness, “Art is not Eternal”, and a surreal vacation from the normal realm will at some point have you realize that sometimes a normal vacation from the never ending trip is important! So, I found this book to be a fun read, an important piece of literature linking the beats to the hippies, an incredible cast of real life people, and how far some rebels have to go to truly make their mark on society to push what they believe in without resorting to extreme violence.

I loved this book as a teenager and I was excited to reread it again as a 33-year-old. I think Wolfe’s writing style really gets in the way of the story, but I still had some big takeaways about the 60s counter culture movement after reading this book. One theory that Wolfe hits on is that the lethargy of LSD sucked the energy out of counter culture/peace/activist movements. If you’re into this book I highly rec checking out the documentary “Magic Trip”. It’s consists of the footage shot on the cross country bus trip in the 60s. One really surprising thing about it is that the Pranksters didn’t dress like hippies. The “movie” was shot before the hippie archetype existed.

Regardless of one's ultimate attitudes about the permissive atmosphere that prevailed during the Pandora's Box that became the 1960's, Thomas Wolfe's detailed, passionate and fascinating portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters makes for required reading. Whether for ill or well, Kesey and the Pranksters are responsible for creating much of what the popular masses call "The 60's". While reading this book, that mere (and ironic) fact becomes ever so clear. When I recently visited Kesey at his ranch in Oregon, I asked him if Wolfe "got it right". Kesey's response? "Yes he did. But understand that he (Wolfe) gives a real East Coast version of what was essentially a West Coast phenomenon." What I think that means essentialy validates many of the other positive reviews of this book: Wolfe uncannily possesses the ability to be "in the Pranster's world, but not of it". This means that while Wolfe is fully willing and able to passionately incorperate the unique linguistic acrobatics of Kesey and the Pranksters in relating the narrative, he maintains somehow a cool, objective distance from all the proceedings. Kesey might be saying that while Wolfe was certainly "on the bus", he was never "ON THE BUS!". This distance is communicated and maintained by Wolfe's refusal to judge the shennanigans. He never really says "yay" or "nay" to the invention of the "counter culture" (whatever in the hell that means). He relates the consequences both natural and man-made that befalls on such behavior, but never comes out from behind the page and says "booh!" He wisely leaves all moral judgement in the place where it rightly belongs: in the hearts and minds of the readers. It is not a book for the weak of back, heart or mind. It will challenge the reader as well as entertain for Wolfe pulls no punches and that is a treatment most appropriate for the Hemingway-esque machismo frat boy jock mentality that underlies all of Kesey's art. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a excellent example of brilliant reporting. It combines stunning writing with cool logic and impassioned empathetic distance. This is a must read.

Fun read!

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I'd been meaning to read this book for years. Like all things of expectation, it wasn't what I thought it would be. What ever is, really? I struggled early with Wolfe's prose. He came off as incredibly ranty, and needlessly verbose, in a sometimes distracting way. He used a lot of hyphens, ellipses, and strange punctuation. (ex: "the lime:::::light::::::"). After some time however I realized that this wasn't how he writes all the time, but rather an attempt to fit his writing to the subject at hand. At first I thought this was somewhat obnoxious, but as I went on I grew more used to it. And besides getting used to it, there were flashes of genuine brilliance in there as well. I mean, some situations were described with such accuracy, insight, and understanding that I was really blown away. These particular portions of the book were, I'm sure, heavily influenced by interviewing primary sources, but regardless Wolfe penned it well. I was appreciative of the fact that throughout the book Wolfe didn't focus solely on the positive and made it clear that there were conflicting interests among even the Pranksters. When in situations like this not everything is happy happy joy joy let's eat acid and mellow out. Interests don't ALWAYS run in the same direction, and when you have someone like Kesey (who is basically a lodestone of the psychedelic variety) running the show there are bound to be rifts and doubts between people. This is a natural thing and I'm glad Wolfe addressed it. I think the best thing to say about this book is that it made me think. Long and hard, sometimes. I found myself reading passages from it and then gazing into the distance in some deep contemplation about anything and everything. The book would spark a thought in me that would turn into a full fledged reflection, maybe even far beyond the points that the book brought up in the first place. Good writing does that I suppose. I will say that I didn't like the way the book ended. It was somewhat anti-climactic in that it sort of just fizzled and went out. Though, I guess you could say the same thing of the Merry Pranksters. There is allegory in that, like so much else in that long, strange trip to go Furthur. COSMO!

Good book, one of the recommendations of Jordan Peterson, i felt that its longer than it should be

Perfetto

I never realized how much I disliked hippies until I read this book. I've had my fair share of interactions with hippies, but none of said interactions quite put them into perspective like this book did. Fair warning, one might find it a bit overwhelming without being aware of some of the things that happened around the timeline that this book was written. The book itself is extremely well written using a lot of slang from the sixties that you could find hard to follow. There were times where it felt like I was with the Merry Pranksters having my own bad trip. 8/10 would read again in a couple of years to rekindle my disdain for hippies. Footnote: The book ends with "We blew it". Surprising. Don't do drugs kids.

Probably one of the best books I have ever read.

Great