The Electic Kool-Aid Acid Test

I really enjoyed this book. I plan on reading it again when my friend returns it.

 

Hey Scott, question for you then: "Who wrote them?" I have heard some rumors about Kesey writing part of the book. Is that what you are suggesting, or something else?

Simply a great book. I have no room or inclination to criticize it. Like Hunter S. Thompson's work, I'm sure it is not exactly "true-to-life," but for different reasons. This doesn't make it any less of a great book in my mind. Books aren't just about being true-to-life, even non-fiction. People need some wiggle room to tell their stories. Exagerration and caricature are great ways to get the point across. James Frey's A Million Little Pieces and the works of David Sedaris are cases in point. People love these books because they are outrageous and larger than life. If I wanted to hear strict life history, I'd let my dad show me some slides. I want a good story, I'll read a good writer.

 

i am not too concerned about who wrote it - but i find that info interesting because the style of the book is the closest i have read that actually captures a taste of the mania and disjointed yet-perfect clartiy acid can give at times, so whoever wrote it probably had taken it...
the memorable dscription of the "who cares, ray-ay-ay-ay?" girl chilled me to the bone even as i laughed...

i would also recommend it to anyone as a good read. i only laughed til i cried in two books - this one and the venetian gondola scene in tim moore's "continental drifter"

 

I love this book.
It's absolutely fantastic.
BEATific.

 

Oh, I love this book... but I admit with some shame that I first read it only because Kesey is my hero, and I was in that early interest phase I always have when I have to find everything about something and absorb it directly into my bloodstream. :sweatdrop

Took me forever to find a copy, though. Because of the prevailing... attitudes around here, I knew it wasn't Coming to a Bookstore Near You, which of course didn't stop me from looking. (I could not find it in a box, I could not find it with a fox...) Took me three months to find it, had to go all the way down to bleedin' Tyson's Corner and check the two-story Books-A-Gogolplex to get a copy.

I lent it to my fiance the last time he came to visit (along with my been-to-hell-and-back copy of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") and now I miss it terribly! He lives three states away and I won't see him for another three months! Guess that'll teach me for trying to broaden his horizons.

...and the part about Kesey giving the cops the slip several times, it's always reminded me of the overdramatic Jack Sparrow escapes in "Pirates of the Caribbean".

(*Running down the hillside from the cops* "You'll always remember this as the day you almost caught the infamous...... oh, shit.")

 

I highly recommend it.

 

My copy is in the mail.
Someone stole it from the Library here.

 

Apprantly Tom Wolfe took a little acid [after the book was written] Great book though

 

i just picked it up from the library. Going to lay down and start it up now.

 

Acid in garbage cans to unsuspecting people?Damn,I bet a lot of folks flunked!!

 

This needs to be one of the next books I read

 

cant put it down

 

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/lifestyle/story/269986.html

 

I enjoy this book, too, because Wolfe writes so well but it troubles me a lot that the Pranksters themselves distance themselves from it. A lot of people have posted here that they think he did a great job describing a period that few of us, posting here were around to witness. It's a good work that stands on its own well, but Wolfe was an outsider. He was never "on the bus". The man voted for George W for chrissake.

 

Read Gurney Norman's DIVINE RIGHT'S TRIP if you want the best hippie "road trip" novel ever written. The Merry Pranksters, who were the subjects of THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST have a number of problems with the way "outsider" Tom Wolfe wrote this book. I have a chapter about both books in my book, THE HIPPIE NARRATIVE.

 

I see I just repeated myself. Oh well! The term hippie wasn't even in use in 1964 when Kesey and the Pranksters took their cross-country road trip. DIVINE RIGHT'S TRIP takes place in 1970 right after Altamont, the outdoor Calif concert when the Hell's Angels bludgeoned a black Stones' fan to death. It's much more about two "real" hippies, age 21, finding themselves in the midst of all the social chaos.

 

it took me a few months to finish the book. the language was pretty complex for me as a non-native speaker and the story was overwhelming and I had to go to school make music and what not. but in the end, it bwas worthit all the time it took to read it from the first till the last page. electrifying!

 

the language was pretty complex for me as a non-native speaker

Wolfe sometimes tends to go a bit too far, I think, with his "style of the times" descriptions, in some places. Particularly with items of clothing, some that he mentioned in that book I had never heard of either (and this is my native language!).

 

wow where does he get those from than?

 

by far one of my favorite books of all time, truly changed who i am as a person and how i percieve the world around me; the whole idea of letting people "do their thing" really got me looking at how i treat my fellow man
truly inspirational at times, the language i felt was spot on as far as describing the psychedelic experience, just a thrilling read