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Jun 15, 2011

oriana rated it:

after reading: Oh my. Oh my goodness what an incredible book. Absolutely stunning.

Sometimes A Great Notion (which, btw, gets its title from the Ledbelly song "Goodnight Irene") is the story of the Stamper family, renegade loggers in Oregon in maybe the fifties. It's an incredible family—Henry, the patriarch, the crazed, stubborn old goat who started the logging business; his son Hank (stoic, serious, earnest, proud, charming) and Hank's cousin Joe Ben (brimming with enthusia More...

20 comments like (21 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2008

Lostinanovel rated it:

I didn’t want to read this one. Its long. Its by some acidhead hippie. Its only famous because Kesey is famous. He has fans because of his lifestyle, not his literary merit. Its about a group of loggers on strike? Ugh, sounds boring. But I gave it a shot and was blown away….

The storyline didn’t grab me right away but Kesey’s writing did. He had talent and this book is creatively ambitious. Every character has a turn at first person voice and the speaker can switch several ti More...

3 comments like (12 people liked it)

May 21, 2008

Etta rated it:

I had picked up and put down this book so many times, trying, without success, to make it through the first 100 pages. It was only until a co-worker and i decided to form a "one-off" book club in order to read it before a theater adaptation by a local company that i made any real progress. even with a clearly defined reason in hand, the first 100 pages can be taxing; it's best to read slowly, savoring the flavor of the words even if you can't quite grasp all the meanings. however, ha More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

AnnaRebecca rated it:

If V. Woolf had

a) grown up within sight of the Coastal Range, and
b) enormous, swinging testes,

then this book would be sold in a 3-pack with "Mrs Dalloway" and "The Waves" today. It's such literatoor, but it's so masculine and so blue-collar also. God I love it. The beautiful, funny slang; the creepy, right-on descriptions of the menacing landscape... It's got man vs. land and man vs. man. Who could ask for anything more?

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

Feb 14, 2008

Joe rated it:

So... I'm going to be 33 in April and I've read a lot of great books. I think I'm going to dedicate a huge chunk of this year into reading the most important books in my life. Sometimes a Great Notion is one of those books.
One can use words like "amazing" "enlightening" "sprawling" "heroic" and "pure" to describe this book but it barely gets at it. This book is why I read fiction. Along with other books like Infinite Jest, The Fountainhead, More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 07, 2007

adam rated it:

Hands down the most underappreciated American novel ever! I think it should be up there with "Moby Dick" "Grapes of Wrath" etc. In fact, I think it is better. it's hard to imagine Ken Kesey, hippy acid head that he was would be able to so write so poignantly and beautifully but he absolutely pulled it off, his other famous novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" doesn't even hold a candle to "Sometimes a Great Notion" It's rather long and it is written in a More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2007

A-ron rated it:

I hated this book for a long time. The opening is difficult to get through, and I needed to start reading it three times over the last few years just to build up enough momentum to get through it. No doubt about it, Sometimes a Great Notion is a difficult novel. But I also think it is a great novel. Once I got the hang of the stream of consciousness and how the narrator switches from character to character, I realized how worthy of a read this book is. And once I reached the middle of it I reali More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2008

Trisha rated it:

Living in the Willamette Valley I had several occasions to see Ken Kesey -- in downtown Eugene, at the MacDonald Theater, and even at the Saturday Market. He enjoyed a local following that elevated him and his friends to an almost rock-star status. My husband had gone to high school with his son and described a Ken Kesey separate from the Merry Prankster charter member and that public persona.

One late spring afternoon, we were driving from Springfield towards Pleasant Hill, and came More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2008

Robert rated it:

Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion (Bantam Windstone, 1964)

I really, really wanted to like this book. An underread novel by an acknowledged American master of letters with a core of fans who consider it one of the best novels of the last century. What could be better? Well, to put it in as few words as possible, Kesey's writing style.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest works, and works so well, because it's tight. It's terse. It says what needs to be said. Kesey knows what he wa More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2007

Martin rated it:

Written in that no-nonsense way that great American writers do so well, that seems effortless yet still full of similes and all the other tricks of the trade. Like sitting around a campfire listening to an old-timer telling his life story, his face taking on the expressions of every character he describes, the darkness of night around the golden fire making you edge closer and closer, mouth gaping, eyes wide. Gave me the feeling I used to get watching The Waltons on a lazy Sunday in my youth. More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2010

Michael rated it:

You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Ken Kesey takes a family of Northwestern loggers, throws in some chainsaws, a drowning family of bobcats, a flood, a bible passage quoting sidekick, (who also drowns), and manages to glue it together with the artistic temperament of one character versus cuckoldry and a labor strike. It's like a big omelet.
The movie, of course, does little to transfer the raw power of Kesey's descriptive talent, nowhere more evident than the bar fight that highlight More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 04, 2008

Carolyn rated it:

Rain Rain Go Away.

This is a wet novel. Set in the rainy season in Oregon you get pruned fingers flipping through the pages. It's lovely. The writing is lovely. I was constantly thinking of turning down corners to mark passages only to turn the page and find something more beautifully written.

This can come off as a man's story at first, it's about loggers and brothers, sons and fathers, but I'm not a man and I was completely caught up from the middle to the end. ( More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 16, 2007

Joel rated it:

A tale of revenge, jealousy, self-discovery, defiance, pride, community, independence and redemption; this book has it all. Whether you identify with the prodigal Leland, the stoic Hank, or the lost Viv, Kesey's emotionally charged but ultimately unbiased portrayal of the struggle of family vs community and family vs itself will exhilarate. Through seamless stream of consciousness(es) you begin to inhabit the hive-mind of the Oregon logging community. The motivations of even the most insignif More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2008

Jared rated it:

Kesey's second novel tells the story of the Stamper family, a logging clan in the fictional Wakonda, Oregon continuing their logging work while the rest of the local industry strikes. Kesey focuses on Lee Stamper, the prodigal son who turned away from the family and their uproarious PNW boarishness to pursue Eastern intellectualism at an Ivy League university, but returns to his family with the hidden motivation of exacting revenge on his half brother Hank for engaging in forbidden congress wit More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2008

Alexia rated it:

This book is mind blowingly amazing. The first 100 pages are a real slog, but once you're in the story is like a river current that won't let you go. A quintessential Northwest read, I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a moving, memorable and challenging read.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 16, 2008

Paige rated it:

Intricate, beautiful, and as tough to chew on as left-out beef jerky, this novel is an epic, EPIC piece of work that gnaws through the bullshit in life and shows the raw-ass intensity of familial issues. This glorious, soggy Oregon novel borders on Greek tragedy--the patriarchal power struggles are dramatic as hell, and the individual characters encapsulate the difficult and exhausting thing that is the human condition.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 12, 2007

Ansky rated it:

By far my favorite book ever... I read it again about every 3 years. I've worn out half a dozen copies (and given away as many), and would just about trade my soul for a hardcover version -- just can't afford it. Yes, it's extremely difficult, and it took me a few tries to get going, but the opening description of the river and the Stamper house on the bank had me hooked and I kept coming back. Once I acclimated to the shifting viewpoints I could barely put it down. There is one passage of o More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2009

Catherine rated it:

The most under-read greatest novel of the last 50 years mainly because the first 80 pages are DENSE.

My 9th grade english teacher told me to skip every other chapter of The Grapes of Wrath if I found the whole turtle-thing boring. But now when I say I've read The Grapes of Wrath I feel like I'm fibbing a bit. In retrospect I wish I'd done the hard work of crossing the highway.

So I would suggest skipping the first section if you find your attention waning...but I would More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 10, 2007

Shrinivasaron rated it:

I had finished college in the spring of 2005 and had landed a job in Oregon. Coming from Wisconsin, Oregon was a foreign world to me. Over the summer before my move, I picked this book up. It does a great job capturing the essence of the Oregon coast. Kesey masterfully interweaves the small town mentalities with larger then life characters.

A recurrent theme in the book is the geese flying overhead. Kesey uses it as a harbinger of upcoming events in the book. I moved to Oregon More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2009

Anna rated it:

Sometimes A Great Notion takes place not too far from the Oregon Coast in the fictional town of Wakonda, Oregon. The plot centers around the Stamper Family during a logging strike. The loggers are striking for the same pay for fewer hours due to the introduction of the chain saw. The Stampers are a hard-headed, hard-working logging family that not only decides to keep working during the strike, but agrees to supply the local mill with lumber.

The decision to keep logging is reflecte More...

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Dec 25, 2008

Pudge rated it:

Like "Cuckoo's Nest", this novel is as big and as expansive as the Pacific Northwest it is set in, where Kesey spins the colorful tale of a ogging family pit by circumstance against big business and the negativity of small town America. Describhed with his usual kaliedoscopic powers of wonderfully flowing detail and color, this is a complex and multi-layered tale, with more than enough ingredients for sustained exploration and interest; passion, betrayal, the intricate inner workings o More...

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Oct 29, 2011

Colleen rated it:

This book is my short list of all time favorites. I first read the book 42 years ago. At that time I was unfamiliar with the Pacific NW, having grown up in SoCal. To acquiant myself with the novel's setting, I drove about 800 miles north and camped along side the Siuslaw River east of Florence Oregon, my closest guess south of the location of fictional Wakonda. When the movie was filmed later, the director guessed north and placed the Stamper place on the Siletz River. While taking breaks from m More...

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May 24, 2011

Diana rated it:

This is my favorite book ever. I read it twice in a row in 2008, pretty much spent the entire year reading just this book. It's a masterpiece. It rocked my socks off, and every other garment I was wearing, in a way that made it impossible to look at books and reading the same way again.

It's about a logging family that is continuing to work despite a strike by the logging company that employs most of the town. They need help to finish this contract job, so brothers Joe Ben and Hank More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 03, 2009

Tim rated it:

Come look. Ken Kesey's first book, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," gets all the attention. Yeah, that movie and everything. Kesey's debut is indeed excellent; "Sometimes a Great Notion" (which, by the way, though patently unfilmable spawned an OK movie of its own, with Henry Fonda and with Paul Newman directing and acting) is much, much better. The way I read, what I read -- hell, life itself -- never the same after I devoured this cantankerous, demanding, swollen, raging, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 21, 2011

Susan rated it:

Don't know why I've returned to Kesey recently, but guess that it was because Mike and I were talking about older books - and visited John Merrill's bookstore in Hallowell recently and Mike read the book long ago after gallbladder surgery that laid him up for a long time and he liked it (not the surgery).
Have been plugging along with the Stamper clan for a while and decided to finish today, so read hard.
Sometimes there IS a great notion - whether it's from Hank or Leland or Henry or More...

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Mar 22, 2011

Lindsey rated it:

It took a bit for me to get into the book at first, as the storytelling style of the book is complex. It was quite difficult, at the start, to distinguish between narrators, but once you can tell, the book really becomes rewarding. I disliked Leland, not because the characterization was incomplete, but because he seemed to be a jerk. Maybe it's that I share many qualities with him, but have no desire to be anything like him. I admired Hank much more, as much for his work ethic as for things More...

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Jul 25, 2010

Pete rated it:

This, along with Toni Morrison's "Beloved", is my favorite book. I believe that it is to manhood what "Beloved" is to womanhood. One recommendation, though: see the movie first. The story is not overly complex, but the characters are. The movie makes the brilliant decision not to try to encapsulate the entire book, but rather to simply show the story, leaning only on terrific acting by most of its cast.

Then, with the general storyline set in mind, the book will unfo More...

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Jan 09, 2010

Joshua rated it:

I'm going to divide my review of this into 2 sections: me as a reader, and me as a writer:

I love reading books that straddle that line between profundity and enjoyment. In "Notion", Kesey tackles some difficult themes--union busting, technology infringing upon humans involvement with the means of production, sex and family politics/roles, revenge, alcoholism, social stigmas--yet the book never feels didactic or preachy. He avoids this because of the tone with which he wro More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 25, 2008

Catherine rated it:

Set on the foggy, green-grey banks of the Wakonda Augu river, Ken Kesey's epic tale of the Stamper family resonates with Freudian anxieties and trepidation in the face of human desires and natural disasters.

Kesey's vivid descriptions of Oregon's lush, sensual, and menacing landscapes creates a backdrop for the drama that unfolds between the aging Stamper patriarch, his two sons, and the community. The story is littered with reader treats that range from a seduction via Wallace Steve More...

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Feb 07, 2011

Noah rated it:

Although the writers of the "beat" generation tend to be fairly low on the need to read list I found this book by Kesey a thoughtful novel about what it means to be a man in a intellectual world versus what it means to be a man in a laborer's world. The setting is the smokey, dense, moist logging towns of the Northwest and the burly, hard-knuckled men that inhabit it. Set against the natural hardscrabble life is the 'sensative' son of the logger who ends up realizing the need of the More...

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