The author writes a first hand account of experiences of famous author, Ken Kesey, and his group of Merry Pranksters, during the period, 1964 to 1966. The drug, L.S.D., was legal up until October 1966. The Merry Pranksters bought a large bus, painted it in psychedelic colors, and travelled the U.S.A., filming their travels and events they organised.

The book provides details of parties with LSD laced Kool Aid, meetings with the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, the Grateful Dead, Allen Ginsberg, Kelsey’s exile to Mexico and his arrests. The main idea of the Merry Pranksters and their Acid test parties, being to enhance the creative process and expand their consciousness. Initially Ken Kesey funded the main expenses of the Merry Pranksters. He had financial success with his book, ‘One Who Flew over the Cuckoos Nest’, first published in 1962.

This book was first published in 1968.

What is it I plan to do with my one wild and precious life? Not waste time reading this book. DNF. I had high (haha) hopes for this book, but I gave up a few hours into the audio.

The narrator was very good. However, the writing came across as pretentious and foolish. The descriptions of the users’ behavior were just unbearable. The writing often felt similar to listening to a middle schooler tell a story about some kid he perceives as cool.

For one brief moment, I thought the author was going to switch to an interesting documentary of the events surrounding this acid test. I was having delusions. Back to more middle school stories.

Okay, here we have a book based on true events where the characters are all my favourite authors from the sixties acid counter-culture movement and they're getting off their nut together on LSD... how could I not love it?

Ken Kesey, Neil Cassidy, Hunter Thompson, Timothy Leary, they're all in there and it's written by Tom Wolfe. That should be all I need to say to get anyone to read this book. But here's more anyway. It's actually the only one of Tom Wolfe's books that I've read (So far) and he more than lives up to his reputation in terms of style and insight. Meanwhile, it was an absolute pleasure to hear about some of my favourite 1960's writers getting up to their usual antics but from someone else's point of view. There are crossover moments in this book with other stuff I've read, such as Hunter's Hell's Angels, too.

If like me you are fascinated by that unique moment in human history when LSD dropped like a seed into the fertile ground of youth raised by and now rebelling against the generation of survivors of the worlds most horrific war ever, then this book is a must. There will never be another 1960's. This book is pure hippy, original hippy, riding a wave of love that didn't break until 1969.

4.5 stars from me.

Adam:)

First, the BOOK. Wolfe's prose is electric, to borrow a phrase. If you want to take an acid trip without the acid, read the book. His knowledge of mythology, religion, and culture is as expansive as his familiarity with rat holes in San Francisco, the dead flora and fauna of Mexico, and the personal hygiene of Hell's Angels. Wolfe may have been one of the few sober journalists in the Merry Pranksters' circle, and his work is shaped by personal experiences and thorough interviews with the principals and archival research. Thankfully, archives were one of the few things that the Pranksters got right.

Second, the MAN. Apparently, Kesey didn't like the book, comparing Wolfe to "shit" and Hunter S. Thompson to "cream" (both float to the top, get it?). I don't wonder why. Kesey comes across as an addled, narcissistic, would-be deity to a group of childish imbeciles. Notwithstanding their huge influence on 1960s' culture, the Pranksters were neither heroes nor visionaries, but rather infantile losers obsessed with the "NOW" at the expense of the past and future. I don't think the drugs destroyed the creativity of a potentially great writer; for one thing, Kesey continued to write (Sailor Song, Kesey's Garage Sale, Demon Box, not to mention Sometimes a Great Notion), none of them particularly good. Instead I think Kesey was a one-time wonder (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), like so many contemporary musical acts of the 1960s.

Kesey could only wish that he had the writing skills of Tom Wolfe.

I had no idea about the sort of person Ken Kesey was; the only frame of reference I had was his novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." This book, or epic journalistic adventure by Tom Wolfe, chronicles Kesey's adventures after the publishing of his first two books (the other "Sometimes a Great Notion," had just been finished).

Kesey had been involved in CIA sponsored drug tests, which included such recreational fun things as LSD, mescalin and cocaine. The CIA knows how to party! The Merry Pranksters, Kesey's traveling/living/family/drug experimentation group, are a major player in this story. Their giant psychedelic bus, called Further, makes a trip to NYC for the World's Fair and a disappointing pilgrimage to see Timothy Leary and his clan. The book follows them back to La Honda in California, where the large acid test parties really start taking off......with Hell's Angels! And Ginsberg! Even the Grateful Dead!

Crazy, day-glo painted people and things (sometimes Kesey in a spacesuit), tripping for hours and hours. The comparison to a new religion/way of consciousness (or even a cult) that Wolfe makes is an astute one. A charismatic leader such as Kesey somehow could bring in extremely rough and dangerous Hell's Angels as well as new age christian leaders from large Californian sects.

Be prepared for stream of consciousness style writing, and sometimes straight up just weird ass poetry. Quite frankly some of the material was either over my head or totally wacked out. I read about a fourth of the book the other night to finish it, and dreamed I was on my own acid trip, which included a Phish show and a wedding. So, did I find a new level of consciousness? No.....is it weirdos like Ken Kesey who may have the right idea? Possibly.

The subject matter of this book appealed to me for its humour and novelty factor. Although the writing is descriptive, funny and re-enacts the crazy times of "The Merry Pranksters", the story quickly becomes repetitive and frustrating and Ken Kesey (whom I admire in his amazing writing of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) comes across as an egotistical narcissist who revels in being the head of the crazy bunch. His self absorbed nature comes across in the book and it starts to grate on the nerves after a while. Despite this, if you're interested in the LSD trips of the 60's and want to hear some funny anecdotes, then read on!

I swear for a good long while I was seriously considering giving this book two stars for Wolfe's disingenuous pseudo-hipster "spontaneity," a la Kerouac but with bells on; the style and tone were actually kind of making me roll my eyes and cringe. And then there are the Merry Pranksters themselves; I can't quite tell if I just outright loathe them or actually begrudgingly envy them; doing whatever feels good in the "now." I tended to use to romanticize hippies uncritically, but have come to see things with more of a balance; their lack of responsibility to the social polity I find less admirable now.

Anyway, the book reads like lightning and is unquestionably a valuable and informative document on the counterculture of the '60s. In many ways, though, I wish Wolfe could have reined in some of his youthful stylistic enthusiasms. I know he's trying to emulate his subjects to a degree, to get in the spirit of the thing, but I think a more straightforward reportage approach would have been to my liking. Then again, the book would not be so famed and well regarded, no doubt.

OK, for 270 pages Wolfe attempts at various times to capture the LSD experience, but it isn't until he allows an acid test participant-- Clair Brush--to speak verbatim in her own words for several pages, that we actually get a real sense of what the experience is like. Clair Brush should have written this book...

FINAL:
The book wore me down a bit; by about page 300 I was wishing it was over. That said, it was a fast read; Wolfe's shotgun impressionistic Jackson Pollock array of words made it easy to speed read large chunks and get a complete enough view of the scene being described. I liked the book best when it slowed down into something closer to standard reportage. The book filled big gaps in my knowledge about the earliest and waning days of the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Anyone interested in the 60s counterculture will have to read this sooner or later. It's kind of unavoidable.

suh-noozefest alert ! at høre om folks lsd trips er omtrænt lige så spændende som at høre andre fortælle om deres tilbagevendende drømme. could not give less of a shit. og krummer tæer over litterære troper af mænd der kalder sig selv et navn

“You're either on the bus or off the bus.”



“The world was simply and sheerly divided into 'the aware', those who had the experience of being vessels of the divine, and a great mass of 'the unaware', 'the unmusical', 'the unattuned.”

I decided to read Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test after finishing Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Wolfe follows Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters as they set out to experience a counter cultural American landscape in their 1939 International Harvester. There were parts I really liked. I now know much more about the writer of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and how he saw his work than I previously did. It was also interesting to get an account of other iconoclastic figures of the 60s such as Neal Cassady (the model for Dean Moriarty's character in On the Road) and the poet Allen Ginsberg. Portraits of the Merry Pranksters were also compelling as were interactions with the band, The Grateful Dead, and the motorcycle gang, Hell's Angels. While I'm glad I read this, and found parts interesting, there were other parts that I felt bogged down the account. 3.5 stars

“Put your good where it will do the most!”

The book reads like a monologue of Dennis Hopper's character in Apocalypse Now!, weird and spiraling and tricked out in acid-head lingo. For the most part its where it should be, its part of the scene and definitely adds to the feel of being "there" and what they sounded like. But the entire later half of the book I struggled to find solid footing (which I should have known about a drug scene-but come on!), and found reading it a little difficult and sometimes frustrating. The last quarter of the book I just pushed myself through, nonstop, to finish it and get the thing done. I felt like I was skimming over random babble and pointless, unnecessary and too frequent use of ellipses. I wanted to read this because it is somewhat of a bridge between the Beat scene and the Hippy scene, and after reading it I can confidently say that it leans far into the later.

The better parts of the book provide detail and insight into the Merry Pranksters that, considering the great amount of drugs they were digesting, I am honestly surprised by how much is there.

If you are interested in the hippy, drug, LSD or Grateful Dead, you should at least attempt a read of this. But be warned, it might give you a headache.

I didn't finish it. The history behind it enthralled me. I actually got to be on the bus at the St. Louis Missouri History museum when it was on tour. That was awesome....so I picked up the book. I just couldn't deal with it. Other things by Wolfe are so much better written,and much more engaging than this. I love Ken Kesey and his writings, and the connection to Kerouac etc . was appealing. This book....not so much......

What a trip!

This was a bizarre book and a fun read. It's the story of Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and his band of Merry Pranksters.

I got into the writing styles fairly quickly - and there are quite a few different styles in the book. At the start of each chapter I'd think - And what are the Pranksters up to now? At one point, I rented the Magic Trip documentary done in 2011 so I could put faces with names and that was very interesting. I didn't quite grok what exactly the Acid Test was for, but that's okay, I just wasn't into the pudding.

I learned quite a bit about the 60's that I didn't know or only had a vague idea about. I may not be on the bus but I did enjoy the ride.

This is the only thing by Tom Wolfe that I have read so far, but I will read more. I could actually read this book twice.