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Ken Kesey, September 17, 1935 - November 10, 2001 Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was born in Colorado on September 17, 1935. He graduated from the University of Oregon, and published two full-length novels that helped to give him a cult following. "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1962) owes much to Kesey's own experience as a ward attendant at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital. This exciting first novel was told from the point of view of a half-Indian man who thinks of himself as the Big Chief pictured on the writing tablets of everybody's school days looking out at the other inmates in a Disneylike world. Its portrayal of the doomed but heroic rebel McMurphy stood for a particular kind of American individualism. The book was adapted into a successful stage play by Dale Wasserman, and in 1975, Milos Forman directed a screen adaptation, which won the "Big Five" Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Best Director (Forman) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman). Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) is a long, complex novel that troubled many of his earlier readers. Kesey's most recent novel was Demon Box (1987); although it was somewhat well received, it was still compared unfavorably to his earlier works. His last major work was an essay for Rolling Stone magazine calling for peace in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. On October 25, 2001, Kesey had surgery on his liver to remove a tumor. He died of complications from the surgery on November 10, 2001. He was 66. (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest… (more)
Kenneth Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.
Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960 following the completion of a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later. During this period, Kesey participated in government studies involving hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline and LSD) to supplement his income.
Following the publication of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he moved to nearby La Honda, California, and began hosting happenings with former colleagues from Stanford, miscellaneous bohemian and literary figures (most notably Neal Cassady), and other friends collectively known as the Merry Pranksters; these parties, known as Acid Tests, integrated the consumption of LSD with multimedia performances. He mentored the Grateful Dead (the de facto "house band" of the Acid Tests) throughout their incipience and continued to exert a profound influence upon the group throughout their long career.
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