The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

by Tom Wolfe

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

book data

4941 ratings, 3.85 average rating, 436 reviews (more data...)

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published

October 5th 1999 (first published 1975) by Bantam

binding

Paperback, 432 pages

isbn

0553380648 (isbn13: 9780553380644)

description

They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey ...more

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All ratings | 5 stars (1278) | 4 stars (2026) | 3 stars (1297) | 2 stars (276) | 1 star (64) | avg 3.85

all | this edition

Paul

Paul rated it:

11/18/07

Read in November, 2007

This book was a huge disappointment. It's hard to believe that a book that included so many interesting people, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsbergh and Neal Cassady just to name a few, could be so tedious and uninteresting. Wolfe's descriptions are clunky and monotonous. This is a guy who is about as square and straight as they come attempting to describe to his readers what it was like for Kesey and the merry pranksters to be high on acid and most of it reads like a hollow impersonation of Jack Kerou...more

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John

John rated it:

11/05/07

bookshelves: always-read-----over-and-over

Read in August, 1975

These nut-jobs actually came to Houston with their bus and parked it two doors down from my best friend in Houston. Around 1969, moon, Led Zeppelin touring, people taking LSD and sitting on the hill in Hermann Park staring at the sun. My older brother and sister would drag me along to look at the "hippies" ... then the next day in the paper would be another story of a young Houston man who had become blind forever by roasting his retinas with pupils wide open looking at the sun. Guess ...more These nut-jobs actually came to Houston with their bus and parked it two doors down from my best friend in Houston. Around 1969, moon, Led Zeppelin touring, people taking LSD and sitting on the hill in Hermann Park staring at the sun. My older brother and sister would drag me along to look at the "hippies" ... then the next day in the paper would be another story of a young Houston man who had become blind forever by roasting his retinas with pupils wide open looking at the sun. Guess I should have given him my shades.

Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters" are the subject of this real-life look into the lifestyle of California hippies , commune living, and all those weird things you kids have heard of happening in the sixties.
Well, The weekend they were in Houston, Ken Kesey (a benign Manson) went to the stadium where a day-long concert of the summer (Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service ... blah blah) was happening and again I was in tow by my older brother and sister, Kathy.
This guy Kesey was there to entertain between sets, a true to life Haight-Asbury scene. At one point, he asked everyone to jump in synchronicity , I thought to feel the stadium rumble for a few seconds, but looking back he may have been trying to cause the thing to collapse! Hell, HE was on the field, as was the stage. I was gonna be the one to die, not him.
Finally, he asked everyone to take a deep breath and let it out slowly as a loud hiss. Again take a breath and hiss. Again... again... over and over we were all seated and I was feeling light headed. Finally he says 'Take one more, deeper than any other, and as you breathe in, stand up and stretch as far as you can and as hard as you can. I remember I did this, and as I stood, I stretched and suddenly everything was going dark ... then wham! I hit the dirt, fainted. I had never fainted before. As I awoke, I noticed EVERYONE IN THIS 70+ THOUSAND SEAT STADIUM WAS ON THE GROUND ... having also fainted. He was indeed a prankster. Hippies.... if you want to know (why?) what it was REALLY like to be around hippies constantly ... read this....less

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John

John rated it:

08/06/07

Read in January, 2003

recommends it for: Literary readers, fans of Larry McMurtry and Ken Kesey, drug fiction readers, aspiring journalists

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is best if you blow through the first fifty pages and take your leisure with the rest. There's equal information in the introduction as in the meat of the story, but less of the fun, and a little more cruelty to the real people behind Wolfe's "new journalism" report. After the introductory portion, where you meet the cast and understand the premise, you're treated to hundreds of pages of episodes, some as short as two pages long, about radical art...more The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is best if you blow through the first fifty pages and take your leisure with the rest. There's equal information in the introduction as in the meat of the story, but less of the fun, and a little more cruelty to the real people behind Wolfe's "new journalism" report. After the introductory portion, where you meet the cast and understand the premise, you're treated to hundreds of pages of episodes, some as short as two pages long, about radical artists, set free to roam in America (and each other), running across parties, senior citizens, and even Hells Angels. Kesey and his merry pranksters are as interesting as any fiction cast Wolfe could have invented, often funny and always irreverent. It's the lack of reverence in Wolfe's new journalism style that will bother the most people, as those who hated what Kesey stood for won't read the book. Whatever information traditional journalism would have reported is shaped, painting some very unflattering pictures of the key players, especially Ken Kesey. I've met many people who had Kesey's masterpiece, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, ruined by Wolfe's portrait of a selfish anti-establishment radical. This isn't quite like Wolfe's other new journalism, either, as there's a stronger sense of bias to it, a pitfall that (whether the sense of bias is true or not) is unfortunately easy to fall into in Wolfe's favorite genre. Much of the middle portion also seems masturbatory, which shines a poor light on the merry pranksters, and makes Wolfe seem like more boring writer than he really is. Between the slants and lack of grave substance in so much of the book, it is easiest to take it for its entertainment value. Controversy and intrigue got this book all the sales it needed years ago, and the success of new journalism ensured that this pioneering work would receive literary status, but fans of Kesey, Wolfe and the other artists involved should only be disappointed that what was ultimately a collusion between so many great writers wasn't a better book....less

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Cody

Cody rated it:

08/06/07

bookshelves: non-fiction

Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I had a hard time with this book. It felt as though Tom Wolfe - despite attempts at objectivity - bought into Ken Kesey's pie in the sky optimism wholesale, missing the undercurrent of sadness and delusion in the Merry Prankster's daily lives. An interesting comparison can be found in the passage detailing the party Kesey throws for the Beatles (whom he doesn't actually invite) with the Hell's Angels. There is a strange cross-over here with Hunter S. Thompson's ...more

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Eric

Eric rated it:

11/22/07

bookshelves: hb-sem

Read in November, 2007

I had a brief interaction with Tom Wolfe last November.

He came to speak to my class in one of those rare "Oh wow, Columbia Journalism might be worth it" moments. Inexplicably, he started in on a lengthy out-of-context run about how the New York Sun was a disgrace of a newspaper. I happened to be working there as a reporter at the time (and hating it), it was one of those surreal coincidences that seem to happen to me on an eerily regular basis. He asked for questions, my hand s...more

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Amanda Sloane

Amanda rated it:

12/01/08

Read in November, 2008

Truly mind-blowing; that's certainly the most obvious praise I could have written, but that's really what it felt like to read, like my mind was being ripped apart at the edges. I agree with other reviewers that maybe the first 50 pages are kinda...well, square...I was thinking, OK, here's this East Coast journalist who's never tried acid making fun of hippies...Then, suddenly---flash---he just *becomes* them. It's as if he were on the bus the whole time, synching minds like everyone else. Wolfe...more

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Louis

Louis rated it:

10/28/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in March, 2005

recommends it for: Anyone

Wolfe is a master. I haven't gotten to the fiction yet, but the non-fiction's so good i'm hesitant to risk it. He's got this incredible gift for finding the singular characters and realities that birthed epochal zeitgeists singlehanded (or typified them). This book, for me - it's the 1960's, condensed into a liquid, dropped onto a day-glo sticker and ready to blow your mind.

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Daniel

Daniel rated it:

11/09/08

A great expository snapshot of the beginning of the psychedelic experiment and some of its legendary personalities. Very entertaining.

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Charlie

Charlie rated it:

11/24/08

bookshelves: fun-reading

I read this fun ride in two nights. It is the story of the birth of acid on the west coast from a point of reference quite distinct from Ram Dass' holy encounters and Tim Leary's expansion of conciousness. A sobering look at the first real hippies who coined the expression, "either you're on the bus or you're off the bus". Compare the reactions of the Merry Prankters to Millbrook (the birth of acid on the east coast) to the reflections of Millbrookies in their own text "The Boo-Ho...more

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Charlie

Charlie rated it:

(review of isbn 0553264915)

10/20/07

This book positively made me want to try acid. Jury's still out on that one, folks.

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Jeff

Jeff rated it:

08/24/08

Read in January, 1995

My first Wolfe, and a nice primer on a SF before my time.

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Bill

Bill rated it:

10/02/08

I'm still boggled that it took me until a few weeks ago to read this book (or anything by Wolfe.) I also will posit that a good deal of my enjoyment derived from interest and lack of moral judgment over the drug-fueled lifestyles depicted in this book. However, even removed from those contextual constraints, this book was an amazing account of the west coast acid revolution.

What I found most striking reading this book some four decades after the events it depicts took place is how many nic...more

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Peter rock

Peter rock added it

09/30/08

I learned nothing than this book but then again acid is nothing compared to good old fashioned beer or booze or grass or m.d.m.a. or meth love smoking meth well let me back up an say it used to be needed that i smoke it or snort it to make sure the women i said plural. The women that choose intimacy with me have it bad for the world i swear they come from actual hell to meet me and they come disguised so adorable and all like they really like me. When a women loves me i try to accept it and all ...more I learned nothing than this book but then again acid is nothing compared to good old fashioned beer or booze or grass or m.d.m.a. or meth love smoking meth well let me back up an say it used to be needed that i smoke it or snort it to make sure the women i said plural. The women that choose intimacy with me have it bad for the world i swear they come from actual hell to meet me and they come disguised so adorable and all like they really like me. When a women loves me i try to accept it and all but who the fuck would love me unless they had self esteem issues them selves. yeah dysfunctional children seek me out but they are adults before i really give them the truth. Drugs are bad for you but then again i did drugs in my mommys womb. Swimmin in a sea of alc/by volume and probally crack a but fuck it bring it further america bring it in FURTHER come into my world ladies and that means the dictators of the world come into my dance space. Further the merry pranksters. Love you YANA Toyber god you are smart i nick named yo "STOLI" in my head i believe that it is spelled Stolichnaya fuck it yana laura my apologises i do not have time spell i love you both and rebecca elizabeth sanders she said her nickname used to be "Peanut" that kinda of scary i used know a young women from back in the day Liquid Sky Designs maybe "peanut" love you 99 montrose avenue crew and company and tribe. ever heard the concept of a pride without pride without judgement.. niether had i then i met laura feldmen and yana toyber and in my head only i said good fuckin job mike sholtis ya freak russian jewish women from brighton. yeah mike not like the Brighton guys are possessive of their women or anything. But you knew i would love every 2nd of it every step forward 2 ta the right 1 step back every step forward 1 to the right 99 steps forward alphabets city 1993-2008 it is a hard nieghbor hood to own emotionally i assure you but it is layed out like the game "BAttle Ship" a prison game originally battle ship GOD bless the SANDERS running chicken shacks all over the world KFC got go run a soup company Rebecca elizabeth Sanders i love you peter rock campbell. Tom wolfe is so proud of remebering not me i lived the 80's 90's and i am very alive today world Y.A.N.A....less

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Kristen

Kristen rated it:

08/12/08

I read this book when I was pregnant in 1999 and my boyfriend and I were moving out to the San Francisco Bay Area. I enjoyed the book a lot, and felt more connected with the good, the bad, and the ugly side of the nineteen sixties in SF, so it was a weird and wonderful coincidence when, through a series of odd events, I found myself shortly thereafter at a Merry Pranksters' party - the last before Ken Kesey died. Such a surreal experience, having just finished the book, eight months pregnant, ...more

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Steve Gallup

Steve rated it:

07/17/08

Read in January, 1998

I believe I came to this book after The Right Stuff, because I was intrigued by Wolfe’s unconventional writing style. (For a while I tried to emulate it.) It’s always so -- what? -- energetic. As in:

“What a curious bunch of bohos. This guy with the general’s stars on his jersey is giving a kind of vesper service lecture on the sins of man and——a toothbrush!——but of course!——he brushes after every meal!——he really does. He brushes after every meal despite the fa...more

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John

John rated it:

05/01/08

Wolfe's fantastically over-the-top use of adjectives really captures the zeitgeist of the late sixties.

This book chronicles the adventures of Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and his Merry Pranksters. They travel around the country setting up Acid Tests, where the participants guzzle Kool-Aid spiked with Owsley Acid, trip out on music (provided by the Warlocks, who became the Grateful Dead)and light shows.

Kesey is an interesting figure in American history, however ...more

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Chris

Chris rated it:

(review of isbn )

01/26/08

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: anyone who dropped 'mystery pills' in high school

You’re completely forgiven if you succumb to the temptation of singing “Hey, Hey, The Gang’s All Here” while ‘freaking on’ this book. While it is an historic account and product of its times (which following one of the central themes of ‘living in the now’ completely invalidates the work immediately even while it’s being written) and names are undoubtedly going to be dropped, this is almost a Who’s Who of a particular brand of relic, the iconic junkies of the burgeoning drug...more You’re completely forgiven if you succumb to the temptation of singing “Hey, Hey, The Gang’s All Here” while ‘freaking on’ this book. While it is an historic account and product of its times (which following one of the central themes of ‘living in the now’ completely invalidates the work immediately even while it’s being written) and names are undoubtedly going to be dropped, this is almost a Who’s Who of a particular brand of relic, the iconic junkies of the burgeoning drug movement. Centered around the affable Ken Kessey (and of course his Merry Pranksters), damn near everybody is at least mentioned within, Neal “Crucify Me” Cassady, Jerry “The Warlock” Garcia, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Jack “I Suck” Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, Sonny Barger, and, rather unbelievably, a dude called Big Nig. I was personally under the pretense that this name was created somewhere around 1998 by a direct heir to the Merry Prankster ranks, a junkie called The Gak, while creating names for his mighty Blood Bowl team, The Atheists. Looking back, I am rather shocked that there are only two possible explanations for this occurrence: either Gak was actually literate and read this book (which I steadfastly refute) or Kessey and his minions were on to something, that somehow Gak had actually tripped on enough acid to ‘synch’ across time and stumble on this and bring glorious, electric, ululating and vibrating harmonious tones to the present::erasing the modern-day lag and embracing-ing-ing-ing the multitudes of existence…man.

Well, needless to say, the book is a timepiece. It certainly adds a touch of élan that my copy is from 1969. I pick up 90% of my books from a resale shop nearby that sells hardcovers for a buck and ppbk for fifty cents. My edition literally reeks of the sixties; every 15th page is dog-eared, a sure sign some stoner couldn’t get very far before realizing they’d read the same sentence a dozen times, everything up to page 247 is discolored in the upper right, presumably by bongwater, and by banging it twice on the coffee table I knocked out enough shwag to roll a torpedo. About the only way I could 'Furthur' the pot-promoting essence of this book would be to use each page in a blow-tube for a week. A timepiece, indeed; the book that is. The story itself, the crap written on the pages of the book, well, that’s not a decision one can make as hastily.

First, it probably helps if you’re fond of drug-induced states of being, particularly if you’re one of those ‘clued in’ people who knows that real appreciation for living in the moment and comprehending the gamut of human emotion only comes from lethargically laying on the ground ‘rapping about all’. If someone else being ‘down with your freak’ is all the certification needed to brand them as intellectual, this book is choc full of clever folk surreptitiously lurking in the corners. If you consider Neal Cassady hip and wise and your selection as the prototype for the next evolution in humanity, despite the book ending with his bedraggled corpse beside the railroad tracks, this may be the book for you.

Secondly, if you don’t appreciate ‘experimental’ writing, this probably isn’t your cup of t.h.c. Call me parochial, call my horizons pathetically limited, but I personally don’t dig on babbling paragraphs of preening ‘flow-etry’ with twenty-seven inane characters of punctuation. That made somewhere around 40 percent of this book fall short of interesting; couple that with the fact that this gibberish is the author’s attempt to relate the rather pointlessly lame story of the Pranksters’ antics with minimal personal involvement. Let’s face it, when someone raps about an acid trip to you, you understand the gist of it, but unless you’ve taken that selfsame trip, aside from your comprehension of what they are relating, you cannot fathom the event as it was. Now imagine 370 pages of that, but now someone telling you about someone else’s account of a trip. If you paid four bucks for admission you’d be asking for it back upon completion.

Lastly, nothing the Pranksters did really seems very funny, cool, or clever. It just seems so pedestrian, especially when the work really tries to stretch a story that was very tired in only two years into something longer. It doesn’t shock me that Wolfe tinkered with the temporal perception of things, you basically have to when considering the subject matter, to help convey that suspension of time that pervaded the tales these fiends told him, but to try making the Pranksters seem like some integral and groundbreaking organization is futile.

If a jaunt through the stank of the 60’s is up your alley, if chilling with Hell’s Angels sounds like a wicked-cool plan, and if knowing about the formative years of ‘the scene’ sounds like something you’re up for, go pick up a copy. Better yet, just go hit up that fossil of a stoner you know and see if they’ve got a copy from these halcyon days past; it will make all the difference.
...less

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Djinnaya

Djinnaya rated it:

12/27/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in December, 2007

excerpt from a history paper I wrote on this book, which I posted to dcbooks:

"While the book doesn’t hold answers, it is a great read for anyone who has ever been part of a subculture. It puts the story out there in a way that is honest and fair, showing not just the idealism, but also the grime and the violence and the difficulties of rebellion against the norm and the inherent dangers in basing a m...more

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Dan

Dan rated it:

(review of isbn 0553264915)

07/17/07

Read in August, 2003

recommends it for: hippies, freaks, ravers, people interested in the 1960s american counter culture

This was a very interesting book about the beginning of the Hippie movement in 1960s America. It continues the story started with the beats and explains how that cultural literary scene progresses (Many of the subjects were active in the beats like Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady.) This book details the physical and mental discovery of the Merry Pranksters on their bus Furthur. It chronicles how some acid dropping hippie artists and writers got a whole generation to tune in, turn on, and drop...more

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Mel

Mel rated it:

03/24/08

Read in March, 2008

Most interesting piece of journalism I've encountered thus far. Wolfe's style is vaguely reminiscent of Kerouac's spontaneous prose and wild anecdotes, which I know annoys most people (blah blah blah kerouac imitator blah), but I really don't think Wolfe would have been able to accurately convey Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' experiences otherwise.In any case, it was definitely an interesting approach to take considering the subject matter and it was apparent throughout the entire book that his...more

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