I looked around and people's faces were distorted...lights were flashing everywhere...the screen at the end of the room had three or four different films on it at once, and the strobe light was flashing faster than it had been...the band was playing but I couldn't hear the music...people were dancing...someone came up to me and I shut my eyes and with a machine he projected images on the back of my eye-lids...I sought out a person I trusted and he laughed and told me that the Kool-Aid had been spiked and that I was beginning my first LSD experience...
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They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. By taking On the Road's hero Neal Cassady as his driver on the cross-country revival tour and drawing on his own training as a magician, Kesey made Further into a bully pulpit, and linked the beat epoch with hippiedom. Paul McCartney's Many Years from Now cites Kesey as a key influence on his trippy Magical Mystery Tour film. Kesey temporarily renounced his literary magic for the cause of "tootling the multitudes"--making a spectacle of himself--and Prankster Robert Stone had to flee Kesey's wild party to get his life's work done. But in those years, Kesey's life was his work, and Wolfe infinitely multiplied the multitudes who got tootled by writing this major literary-journalistic monument to a resonant pop-culture moment.
Kesey's theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test" soirees that launched The Grateful Dead required Wolfe's Day-Glo prose account to endure (though Kesey's own musings in Demon Box are no slouch either). Even now, Wolfe's book gives what Wolfe clearly got from Kesey: a contact high. --Tim Appelo, Amazon.com
Review
"A day-glo book, illuminating, merry, surreal!" (The Washington Post )
"Tom Wolfe is a groove and a gas. Everyone should send him money and other fine things. Hats off to Tom Wolfe!" (Terry Southern )
"Not simply the best book on the hippies, it is the essential book... The pushing, ballooning heart of the matter... Vibrating dazzle!" (The New York Times )
"An American Classic" (Newsweek )
"Tom Wolfe is a groove and a gas. Everyone should send him money and other fine things. Hats off to Tom Wolfe!" (Terry Southern )
"Not simply the best book on the hippies, it is the essential book... The pushing, ballooning heart of the matter... Vibrating dazzle!" (The New York Times )
"An American Classic" (Newsweek )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've savored just about every word this man's ever written. I still vividly recall him at a lecture he gave in Berkley in 1972 standing at the lectern in his white Gatsby suit, starched pink shirt and nattily knotted tie. I can't recall the ostensible topic. He covered so much ground and had such a wealth of ideas and insights that the topic was irrelevent anyway. He's always been our keenest observer of American culture, on subjects ranging from hippies, art snobs, wall street, the space race, to the Southern nouveau-riches.
In terms of unadulterated reading enjoyment, however, this book is still my favorite. He captures the era perfectly. This was the period in the mid-sixties when the hippie philosophy and lifestyle was still genuine, before it had become commercially exploited by the mass media, before Manson and Altamont and the seeds of evil. It was an uncorrupted, pure, joyous movement and moment. Owsley was the bay area chemist who produced hits of Sandoz-quality acid that sent the children out dancing blissfully through the night and into the purple dawn. It truly looked like a brave new world. If you are young and can't undertand why former hippies wax nostalgic about it, it's primarily (at least to me) because that tiny era of innocence can never be recreated.
In terms of unadulterated reading enjoyment, however, this book is still my favorite. He captures the era perfectly. This was the period in the mid-sixties when the hippie philosophy and lifestyle was still genuine, before it had become commercially exploited by the mass media, before Manson and Altamont and the seeds of evil. It was an uncorrupted, pure, joyous movement and moment. Owsley was the bay area chemist who produced hits of Sandoz-quality acid that sent the children out dancing blissfully through the night and into the purple dawn. It truly looked like a brave new world. If you are young and can't undertand why former hippies wax nostalgic about it, it's primarily (at least to me) because that tiny era of innocence can never be recreated.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By "bossdafunk"
Format:Paperback
As somebody slightly obsessed with the major happenings of the sixties, but who missed the period by a good 10 years, I found this book compelling. I've heard stories for years by old hippies about their crazy travels, but nothing as lucid as Wolfe's excellent commentary on the Merry Pranksters. Kesey is painted as a zarathustra-esque messiah of hippiedom, leading his dedicated crew of followers into an awesome social experiment.....and not with small thanks to a little LSD! Slightly crazy, slightly dark at times, frequently funny, constantly fascinating. Wolfe seems to capture the idealistic notions of the pranksters' attempts to subvert society perfectly; as a reader you're literally bumping around the back of the bus with them. Oh for a big psychedelic school-bus!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Talc Demon
Format:Paperback
Ken Keysey is a myth in his own time. The author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, the guru of LSD culture as the more gritty and real reflection of Timothy Leary (or I should rather say Leary was Keysey's reflection).
Given this, it is only right that he should be the central subject of a book written about this culture and time, which is in essence what the Electric Kool-aid Acid Test is.
This account describes the rise and fall of LSD culture from the early 1960s. Tom Wolfe, a prominent journalist of the time documents Keyseys journey from his early involvement in official LSD experiments and his establishment of an LSD community whose primary aim was to seek enlightenment using LSD as a tool, to Keysey's ultimate rejection of LSD.
This book is a testament to the charisma and strength of Keysey's character in his ability to lead his merry bunch through their escapades across America, outraging the local conservatives in doing so. Keysey's will and skill is put to the test from such tasks as wooing the cultural intelligentia of the day to the altogether more hazardous pursuit of entertaining the Hell's Angels.
There are some excellent scenes in the book, for example incorporating the person on whom Kerouac's "On The Road" hero Moriarty, is based upon, and also a description of the meeting between Keysey and Kerouac, where the egos of the two appear to clash in a "this town ain't big enough for two intellectual authors"-type scene.
My only criticism is that Wolfe sometimes appears a little star-struck by Keysey, who is clearly highly seductive. However, he manages to maintain enough objectivity to make this book a fascinating description of the culture and politics of the 1960's, as told through the inspiring anti-convention adventures and escapades of Keysey and his disciples. I cannot but give this book 5 stars as an account of the truth behind the pop myth of the 1960's psychedelic revolution.
Given this, it is only right that he should be the central subject of a book written about this culture and time, which is in essence what the Electric Kool-aid Acid Test is.
This account describes the rise and fall of LSD culture from the early 1960s. Tom Wolfe, a prominent journalist of the time documents Keyseys journey from his early involvement in official LSD experiments and his establishment of an LSD community whose primary aim was to seek enlightenment using LSD as a tool, to Keysey's ultimate rejection of LSD.
This book is a testament to the charisma and strength of Keysey's character in his ability to lead his merry bunch through their escapades across America, outraging the local conservatives in doing so. Keysey's will and skill is put to the test from such tasks as wooing the cultural intelligentia of the day to the altogether more hazardous pursuit of entertaining the Hell's Angels.
There are some excellent scenes in the book, for example incorporating the person on whom Kerouac's "On The Road" hero Moriarty, is based upon, and also a description of the meeting between Keysey and Kerouac, where the egos of the two appear to clash in a "this town ain't big enough for two intellectual authors"-type scene.
My only criticism is that Wolfe sometimes appears a little star-struck by Keysey, who is clearly highly seductive. However, he manages to maintain enough objectivity to make this book a fascinating description of the culture and politics of the 1960's, as told through the inspiring anti-convention adventures and escapades of Keysey and his disciples. I cannot but give this book 5 stars as an account of the truth behind the pop myth of the 1960's psychedelic revolution.
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4.3 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A LITTLE STRAIGHT FOR MY TASTE
I READ THIS AFTER HEARING WOLF USED SOME OF HUNTER THOMPSON TAPES HE RECORDED WHILST RESEARCHING FOR HELLS ANGELS BUT THE GUY DOESN'T SEEM TO HAVE A SENCE OF HUMOUR BUT DO ENJOY... Read more
Published 1 month ago by A. Fairweather
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oh to have been there.
Fast delivery, a great product and what would it have been like to be there at this time of huge social change? Read more
Published 1 month ago by Alan Orgill
5.0 out of 5 stars
The other half of The New Journalism
It is with great appropriatenessnessness that Hunter Thompson, in an S-less state, is mentioned, as the author of "Hell's Angels", as this is the other half of the equation whose... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Davey
5.0 out of 5 stars
Iconic
This is an iconic book on the introduction of the recreational use of LSD written in Wolfe's engaging style. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Bruce
5.0 out of 5 stars
The definative title on the counterculture
There is little i can say that has not een said already aout Woolfe's classic tales of Ken Kesey any his merry band of pranksters, So i will instead share its effect on the... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Stalepixel
2.0 out of 5 stars
Self indulgent trip
Overrated, over hyped, self indulgent and badly written. This is a difficult book to get to the end of. Read more
Published 22 months ago by M. Daly
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thanks very much
Id just like to thank you for the book "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" I really enjoyed it, its a shame you got rid of the book, I received it very quickly and I appreciated your... Read more
Published on 11 May 2011 by James
5.0 out of 5 stars
Electric Kool Aid
Ken Kesey is one of the most interesting people from the sixties without a shadow of a doubt. After getting the money from his book "one flew over the cuckoo's nest", he and his... Read more
Published on 29 Nov 2010 by Rockywhitt
4.0 out of 5 stars
Has not aged well over the years.
Once upon a psychedelic time this was one of the best reads around and no doubt there are some who would say it still is. Read more
Published on 3 Aug 2010 by ANITA
5.0 out of 5 stars
Groovy baby
To me this is the definitive guide to the start of psychedelic hippy culture and makes an excellent read for those with an interest in the history of youth culture. Read more
Published on 7 Sep 2009 by nicholas hargreaves
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