The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 1968; vuoden 1999 painos)

Kind of mixed feelings on this one. I think Tom Wolfe does as good a job as he can of describing the long, strange trip of the Pranksters, but I also think that this works against him - there were only so many attempts to describe an LSD experience I could take before I grew frustrated and wished Wolfe would just relate things in a more straightforward way. ( )

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. ( )

Surprising that I never read this back in the day. About 50 pages in, I had the same experience as watching Easy Rider after so many years - about 8-10 years ago. I remember getting set up in my living room with a nice glass of wine and thinking "ah, this is gonna be a great stroll down memory lane..." and then, it was mostly Dennis Hopper uttering repeated "wow, man" phrases about almost everything, implying the he was more in the know than others. Like that, with this book.

Perhaps we have "evolved" or experienced enough trauma that this level of navel-gazing seems irrelevant. Felt that way to me, so on to the next thing. I'll get my historical fix from music, directly, especially about this time period. ( )

To me, nothing says Christmas better than trippy colors mixed with love, peace, and harmony.

Turn on the lights and turn yourself on, find the bus and/or Santa's sleigh, and it's truly the season to be jolly!

... and freak out the squares, man.

Break the mold in our lives, put on the day-glow, THINK DIFFERENTLY, and DEFY EVERYTHING! It's CHRISTMAS-ish. :) Let's check out those elvish helpers...

The Merry Pranksters!

Ken Kesey (un)led this band of social explorers took so many mind-altering trips that they spawned a whole movement in the mid-sixties... so much so that the whole thing became passe and overdone well before '69, and even burned out a number of mental cosmonauts before LSD became illegal a few years before.

This particular book is a Non-Fiction in the best tradition of great storytelling. Or is it the reverse?

Doesn't matter. It's all real. It happened. A Kerouac-Adventure diving deep in the psyche as well as busting social-norms, these Merry Pranksters hung out with Hell's Angels, disturbed a disturbed America, and gave access to unimaginable quantities of hallucinogenics to the world. The impact on music, fame, spirituality is undisputed. This was the total awakening of the imagination, for good or ill, that made people hope for a brighter future.

Hope and all these people working together to build something bigger than any of us IS the point. Never mind that it didn't quite turn out the way they hoped. The pendulum sure swang back HARD on them.

Even so, this history is pretty freaking amazing. All the good, the bad, the ignorance and the hope... it just smells like Christmas to me!

Merry Christmas! The bus is here!

( )

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