Ken Kesey

by Claire Michelle Smith

Born Sept 17, 1935 in La Junta, Colorado. Ken Kesey's writing stands at the midpoint between the literary period of the Beats of the 1950's and the Hippies of the 1960's.

Kesey first found success at the age of 27 with his most famous work, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest which tells the story of a group of psychiatric patients who organise a rebellion in a mental hospital ward. Since then, he has written many more books.

He was most famous for his support of the use of LSD and the mad-cap tour of America he organised, in a psychadelic school bus with Neal Cassady and a group of like minded people called the 'Merry Pranksters' . The idea was to take people 'Furthur' into their consiousness, through LSD, to a new dimension never before attained.