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The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 · rating details · 32,133 ratings · 1,031 reviews

"An American classic" (Newsweek) that defined a generation. “An astonishing book” (The New York Times Book Review) and an unflinching portrait of Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters, and the 1960s.

Paperback, 384 pages

Published December 1st 1982 by Bantam Books (Mm) (first published 1968)

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Nov 18, 2007 Paul Schroeder rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 Kerouac....more

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Nov 28, 2009 Charlie rated it 3 of 5 stars

First time around, this book positively made me want to try acid. Jury's still out on that one, folks.

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Nov 05, 2007 John Hampton rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: always-read-over-and-over

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 h...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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Nov 08, 2012 Sketchbook rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Did the Man in the White Suit have "Sweet Tooth" pushers ?
In the 60s he teased through his hat, to great acclaim ;
his liberal dose of saucy irreverence bursts with a brisk
vein of low humor. He injected the comic strip into daily
journalism-scribbles and it became his pet province. Meanwhile,
he remains a sort of modest church lady. Some of his pieces
are swell; he's at his best when he's at his waggiest (for he
never reaches wit). As a New Journalist, he dares to probe
inner thoughts of others; be...more

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Nov 26, 2012 Andy Miller rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was assigned to read this book in college(1975). I couldn't finish it, it seemed to be so....poorly written. I tried again this year as I've just reread Kesey's books and On the Road. This book focuses on a bus trip organized by Ken Kesey and driven by Neal Cassidy(the real Dean Moriaty in On the Road shortly after Kesey finished Sometimes a Great Notion--and the bus ride is basically one long acid trip.
I read it this time- more as an interesting history of compelling characters from a fascin...more I was assigned to read this book in college(1975). I couldn't finish it, it seemed to be so....poorly written. I tried again this year as I've just reread Kesey's books and On the Road. This book focuses on a bus trip organized by Ken Kesey and driven by Neal Cassidy(the real Dean Moriaty in On the Road shortly after Kesey finished Sometimes a Great Notion--and the bus ride is basically one long acid trip.
I read it this time- more as an interesting history of compelling characters from a fascinating time, the only drawback being that it is so...poorly written.
But a compelling story made more interesting by so many characters becoming much more famous since the book was written. It bridges Neal Cassidy, think of the Beat Generation of the 50's driving to Larry McMurtrey's house(think Lonesome Dove). You meet Hunter Thompson and his articles on the Hell's Angels and then meet the Grateful Dead who started off as a house band for the Electric Kool Aid tests(LSD parties)
Interesting read but so many things bothered me. Essentially glorifies the Hell's Angels a group of people who rape and rob and ridicules a group of Unitarians whose only sin appears to be that they are too earnest in wanting peace and helping others. The description of the Merry Pranksters walking out of a Beatles concert was supposed to be a statement about crowd infatuation with the Beatles, but I couldn't help wonder if it was because Kesey couldn't stand not being the center of attention.
Wolfe's telling of how Kesey's speech to an anti war rally supports Wolfe's cynicism about anyone who tries to actually change our country, but I couldn't help that it was easy for Kesey to deceive anti war activists and then ridicule them as a wrestling injury allowed him to avoid the draft.
Anyway, the book did make me think, it was an interesting story and did evoke the times but I finished glad that Wolfe's 1960's style of writing (New Journalism) did not catch on and wishing that Kesey's LSD use and other values hadn't kept him from writing more books like Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.(less)

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Nov 11, 2009 Kaya rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You know those books that blew your mind in high school? Like Siddhartha or anything by Bukowski or Nietzche and you read it in a cafe trying to look cool to the older hippies who ran the place and one of them sleazed up to you and said, "you have beautiful skin" and gave you a copy of Tom Wolfe's book on the Merry Pranksters and tried to get you to go out back and smoke a suspiciously tangy looking joint which you delcline but take the book, and read it and are briefly tempted to run off to a c...more

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Jul 22, 2012 Erik Graff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Americans

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: travel

This is one of the popular books of adolescence which I didn't get around to reading until an adult, inspired, in part, by having seen the movie version of Kesey's Cuckoo's Nest. I would have liked it more as a teenager.

Now, forty some years after publication, Electric is a bit of an historical curiosity. As much as the writings of Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert or Alan Watts, it substantially contributed to the creation in the public's eye of the counter-culture. As a kid I would...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Evan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1960s, pop-culture-misc, beatnik-types, 2009-reads, bohemian-rhapsodies

I swear for a good long while I was seriously considering giving this book two stars for Wolfe's disingenuous pseudo-hipster "spontaneity," a la Kerouac but with bells on; the style and tone were actually kind of making me roll my eyes and cringe. And then there are the Merry Pranksters themselves; I can't quite tell if I just outright loathe them or actually begrudgingly envy them; doing whatever feels good in the "now." I tended to use to romanticize hippies uncritically, but have come to see...more I swear for a good long while I was seriously considering giving this book two stars for Wolfe's disingenuous pseudo-hipster "spontaneity," a la Kerouac but with bells on; the style and tone were actually kind of making me roll my eyes and cringe. And then there are the Merry Pranksters themselves; I can't quite tell if I just outright loathe them or actually begrudgingly envy them; doing whatever feels good in the "now." I tended to use to romanticize hippies uncritically, but have come to see things with more of a balance; their lack of responsibility to the social polity I find less admirable now. But, I have to say, the book reads like lightning and is unquestionably one of the most valuable and informative documents on the counterculture of the '60s. In many ways, though, I wish Wolfe could have reined in some of his youthful stylistic enthusiasms. I know he's trying to emulate his subjects to a degree; get in the spirit of the thing, but I think a more straightforward reportage would have been to my liking. Then again, the book would not be so famed and well regarded, no doubt.

OK, for 270 pages Wolfe attempts at various times to capture the LSD experience, but it isn't until he allows an acid test participant-- Clair Brush--to speak verbatim in her own words for several pages, that we actually get a real sense of what the experience is like. Clair Brush should have written this book...

FINAL:
The book wore me down a bit; by about page 300 I was wishing it was over. That said, it was a fast read; Wolfe's shotgun impressionistic Jackson Pollock array of words made it easy to speed read large chunks and get a complete enough view of the scene being described. I liked the book best when it slowed down into something closer to standard reportage. The book filled big gaps in my knowledge about the earliest and waning days of the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Anyone interested in the 60s counterculture will have to read this sooner or later. It's kind of unavoidable.

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Dec 27, 2007 Djinnaya rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 movement on a mind altering drug. It might be easy to reject the story as a tale of mistaken adven...more

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Oct 02, 2007 gaby rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: hippies, 60s revisionists

Shelves: new-journalism

This book was okay. Tom Wolfe was always an outsider, a New Yorker, even a (gasp) Yalie. He was never really 'on the bus' if you know what I mean. But for a square, he explains the scene pretty well. The pranksers were like the scenesters of any era: self-absorbed and fairly boring pricks. It is an interesting book for one fact if nothing else: it's kind of the only book written in the 60's about the 60's. HS Thompson didn't really get rolling til the early 70's (Hells Angels came out in the 60'...more

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Aug 06, 2007 John Wiswell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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 artists, set free to...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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Mar 29, 2010 Nat rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have Tom Wolfe's aesthetic taste figured out: He likes exuberance. He doesn't like ascetics. Asceticism is unamerican.

In The Right Stuff, he prefers Yeager and the test pilots to the astronauts who don't get to really fly their capsules.

In From Bauhaus to Our House, he loathes the European modernists (Mies et al.) and he likes FLW and Saarinen.

In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, he sides with Kesey and the Pranksters with their undoctrinaire deployment of LSD and technology against other psy...more

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Aug 11, 2007 Maria rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-fiction

My favorite idea presented in the book.

"A person has all sorts of lags built into him, Kesey is saying. Once, the most basic, is the sensory lag, the lag between the time your senses receive something and you are able to react. One-thirtieth of a second is the time it takes, if you are the most alert person alive, and most people are a lot slower than that.... You can't go any faster than that... We are all doomed to spend the rest of our lives watching a movies of our lives - we are always ac...more

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Nov 22, 2007 Eric K. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: hb-sem

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 shot up first, and...more

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Dec 25, 2008 Pudge rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Let me preface this review by saying I was not alive in the 60's, and I never talked to my parents about their experiences, yet through this book, I feel as though I shared in the madness that were the Acid Tests. Tom Wolfe's masterpiece "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," is an absolutely amazing book written about a group of Hippies hell-bent on spreading they're organized chaos throughout the nation. Apart from the subject matter (which I'll get to) this book is as well written as you could im...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Fred rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am a little unsure what rating is appropriate for this book. Being a fan of Tom Wolfe's other work--namely his fiction-- and having read so many reviews lauding Acid Test as the Seminal Guide to Understanding the 60's Counter Culture, I was eager to read this book.
And true to form, Wolfe's writing is engaging, entertaining, and smart.
Not only does he brilliantly capture the 'atmosphere' but he adeptly imparts the nuances.
For children of the early 50's who perhaps lived in a cave and therefore...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Rick Skwiot rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had forgotten (successfully) how pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, self-absorbed, and self-righteous hippies were. Maybe, as a full-fledged member of the If-It-Feels-Good-Do-It Generation, I was subconsciously embarrassed by my own pretentiousness, pseudo-intellectuality, self-absorption, and self-righteousness in those days.

But I recently restored my suppressed memory by hooking down Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," first published in 1968. The book I had avoided for thirty year...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had no idea about the sort of person Ken Kesey was; the only frame of reference I had was his novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." This book, or epic journalistic adventure by Tom Wolfe, chronicles Kesey's adventures after the publishing of his first two books (the other "Sometimes a Great Notion," had just been finished).

Kesey had been involved in CIA sponsored drug tests, which included such recreational fun things as LSD, mescalin and cocaine. The CIA knows how to party! The Merry Pran...more

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Nov 09, 2011 Matt Pawinski rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe, is a personal account by the author of his journey across America with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their bus, "Furthur." The story is written from the perspective of Tom Wolfe as he observes Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters tank acid and trip out at different places across the United States. Their big statement, made throughout the book, is that "your are on or off the bus;" meaning that you are on the bus doing acid and tripping out or...more "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe, is a personal account by the author of his journey across America with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their bus, "Furthur." The story is written from the perspective of Tom Wolfe as he observes Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters tank acid and trip out at different places across the United States. Their big statement, made throughout the book, is that "your are on or off the bus;" meaning that you are on the bus doing acid and tripping out or off the bus and not dropping acid.
"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" tells how the psychedelic movement started: with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and their acid tests. While under the influence of LSD, Kesey begins to attract a band of followers: the Merry Pranksters. They all have a common interest: tripping out on LSD: finding a outer worldly state of mind. They begin to have wild acid tests at Kesey's house in La Honda, California. They paint everything in neon Day-Glo colors, and since LSD wasn't yet illegal they had nothing to worry about. The Pranksters first journey was to New York. They bought a bus, which they paint in Day-Glo and named "Furthur." Along the way they took trips on acid. When they went back to California, Ken Kesey was praised as a leader of this new counter cultural movement that had begun. He befriended the Hell's Angels because they also had the interest of partying on acid. Soon, however, Kesey is busted by the authorities for possession of marijuana, and was faced with jail time, so he fled the country to Mexico. The Pranksters join him, but in this desert land they simply cannot recreate the feeling of the Acid Tests that they held back in California. Kesey decided to sneak back into the U.S. as a drunk country singer and then plays "cops and robbers" with the police, he appears on television and has interviews in the paper, until he is finally caught by the FBI. When Kesey goes before a judge, he tells him that in California he had a vision of "moving beyond acid." The judge lets him out to prepare for this great Acid Test Graduation, in which the Pranksters will try and transcend time and space. This Graduation, which draws huge media attention (and much consternation from the huge community of people now taking LSD) ends up being a total failure, and though Kesey and the Pranksters believe they might have graduated from acid, no one follows along this time.
There were some parts when I liked the novel and other parts when I didn't. The first 50 pages was just about the most bored I have ever been reading a book. Once I got past the 50 page hump it was smooth sailing. The book gives about 20 incidents when they are on drugs and I found those the most interesting/exciting parts because you don't read about people tripping on acid nowadays. I believe the book could have an abridged version that had the parts when they were on acid and cut out the extra fillers like when Wolfe talked about Ken Kesey and his book "One Flew Over the Cookoos Nest." Even though I have a lot of negativity towards this book it was important that I learned what the 60's was like for the writers of that decade. I could make alot of connections with the information about the Beatles, the Grateful Dead and the Hells Angels. I found it interesting how they all interacted with each other. (less)

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Sep 10, 2011 Meghan Fidler rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tom Wolfe gives one of the greatest introductory descriptions I have ever encountered, and though I am tempted to quote the entire first paragraph, to add the spongy suspension of the truck into the feeling of my own words, down hills of martini glasses and marshmallow heads, but I will assert some self-control and preserve my word count for other descriptions with the hopes that the reader will seek out the first few pages immediately through some on-line medium.
The text successfully captures...more Tom Wolfe gives one of the greatest introductory descriptions I have ever encountered, and though I am tempted to quote the entire first paragraph, to add the spongy suspension of the truck into the feeling of my own words, down hills of martini glasses and marshmallow heads, but I will assert some self-control and preserve my word count for other descriptions with the hopes that the reader will seek out the first few pages immediately through some on-line medium.
The text successfully captures the feeling of the Pranksters, which Wolfe explains as one of his main goals in the afterward. At first it made me nostalgic about my own brief and inhibited experiences, with a strong desire to find a Lid chasing on the heels of this sensation. ::::SUCCESS:::: all-one. But as the adventure wore on I found my mind echoing the same desires that shaped my personal short and inhibited experiences: I was burnt-out tired by the time the FIRST bus ride ended.
My favorite chapter, "Cloud," delightfully tied in many historical figures, much as "The Hell's Angles" chapter. While the sensation of LSD experience fried my consciousness as if my brain had been laid directly on the reflective surface of a white sand beach in the hot sun, Wolfe did a good job connecting the interaction of groups during this time by voicing the perception of the community. Allow me to demonstrate:
"All of the sudden the Negroes are out of the hip scene, except for a couple of pushes like Superspade and a couple of characters like Gaylord and Heavy. The explanation around Haight-Ashbury is that Negroes don't take to LSD. The big thing with spades on the hip scene has always been the quality known as cool. And LSD freaking well blows that whole lead shield known as cool, like it brings you right out front, hang-ups and all. Also the spades don't get much of a kick out of the nostalgia for the mud that all the white middle-class kids who are coming to Haight-Asbury like, piling into pads and living freaking basic, you understand, on greasy mattresses on the floor that the filthiest spade walkup on Fillmore wouldn't have, and slopping up soda pop and shit out of the same bottle, just passing it around from mouth to mouth, not being hung up on that old American plumbing&hygine thing, you understand, even grokking the weird medieval vermin diseases that are flashing through every groin--crab lice! you know that thing, man, where you first look down at your lower belly and see these little scars, they look like, little scabs or something, tiny little mothers, and you pick one, root it out, and it starts crawling! Oh shit! and then they're all crawling and you start exploring your mons pubis and your balls and their alive. Its like a jungle you never saw before, in your own crotch..." (357-8).(less)

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May 31, 2011 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"You're either on the bus...or off the bus." This is the choice facing you as you begin to read Tom Wolfe's classic saga of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters as they test the boundries of consciousness and test the limits of other human's patience. What is almost as amazing as the lengths to which the pranksters went to enjoy their existence on Earth, is the style that Wolfe has chosen to narrate the adventures. Brillliantly blending stream of consciousness writing and a journalistic sense of descrip...more

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Apr 13, 2011 Rachel Hope Miranda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

From Seventh Grade on (& still now) I found myself absolutely fascinated by the 1960’s and the freedom of the era. Every time a school project came about, I would find some way to focus it around this time period, which leads me to convincing my mother to purchase this, Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and many other books. At the time I first read this (Seventh Grade) I completely and utterly did not understand it; I found myself attempting to “look cool” by bringing it with me e...more

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Feb 10, 2011 Nathan Perry rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

A pretty fucked up account of Ken Kesey's life after his success with "One who flew over the cuckoo's nest" and the drug antics with his hippie friends on a very strange looking bus. I am particularly interested in how these people continued to get away with what they were doing; driving cross country while exposing America to LSD as they went, surviving the antics of the Hell's angels, and their own inner politics and ethics. And it's a true story! My God. And it was scribed by Tom Wolfe; this...more

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Jan 07, 2011 Ellie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fun, 1001-books

It's a fair amount of years ago but I remember it as a fair amount of fun, although very up & down in the quality of the writing and the interest of the material (or at least my interest). I think I liked the title most of all.It was, after all, my time and reflected a lot of the feelings I had about "hippies". The press always lumped "hippies" and "political activists" together, which seemed very odd, since "dropping out" and "working to change the system" would seem to be almost tautologic...more

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Oct 17, 2010 El rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cultural-studies-and-other, late20th-centurylit, cuckoos

(ETA: Supposedly Gus Van Sant is working on making a movie of this book, slated for 2011.)

Much like Kerouac's On the Road, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was one of those books that I tried several times to read and always failed miserably to get through the first chapter. I made it a priority of mine now to sit down with it and read the effing thing.

(Side note: I have a notebook I've kept for... a really long time... in which I started writing down books I wanted to read when I worked at a use...more

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Jul 09, 2010 Dimitri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: not sure

Recommended to Dimitri by: I don't remember

Shelves: re-read

I thought this book was totally awesome when I first read it, and I liked it a lot when I read it the second time. I have mixed feelings about it now.

I grew up about 15 minutes from the Merry Pranksters' old stomping grounds in La Honda, and have actually found some dilapidated old remnants of tree house structures that my friends and I were 99.9% sure belonged to the Pranksters - even though the mushrooms we were on at the time might have clouded our judgement a bit.

In the first chapter, Wolfe...more I thought this book was totally awesome when I first read it, and I liked it a lot when I read it the second time. I have mixed feelings about it now.

I grew up about 15 minutes from the Merry Pranksters' old stomping grounds in La Honda, and have actually found some dilapidated old remnants of tree house structures that my friends and I were 99.9% sure belonged to the Pranksters - even though the mushrooms we were on at the time might have clouded our judgement a bit.

In the first chapter, Wolfe visits Kesey at the San Mateo County Jail in my hometown of Redwood City, and that's kinda neat too I guess. Maybe it's 'cause I've visited so many people there myself, or maybe it's just that people from Redwood City seem to get off whenever get any national attention (Scott Peterson trial, iPhone prototype fumble, etc.)

I really really dig the history and the local flavor I find in this book, and also what it was for me at the time that I first read it - a springboard of sorts. I was really big into the Psychedelic 60s thing in my youth (the music, the drug culture, a certain kind of "free love" promiscuity, all that stuff) and I guess these are some the reasons that I keep it outwardly displayed on my bookshelf (well, that, and it's the first-edition copy that my ultra hot super cool author girlfriend bought for me a couple Christmases ago).

Let's just say that I definitely have a special appreciation for this book. But on the other hand, I've grown to dislike Tom Wolfe a bit for how he wrote it.

He is way too detached from the "scene," and everything that goes on, and he couldn't really do any better than he did 'cause he's such a preppy goon.

I "get" that it was supposed to be an outsider's point of view - to present a palatable hippie safari for the masses - and, y'know, that's cool and all, but I have learned enough about all these happenings from old timers and other primary sources to understand that Tom Wolfe is just out of place in this book, and out of touch. He's not capturing the true essence of the Prankster spirit - if there ever was one to single out. It's pretty much his interpretation - which I have a certain level of disdain for nowadays.

I really do appreciate The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for what it was for me, and what it is still, but I also have a certain level of contempt for the author.

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May 31, 2010 Mira Sytsma rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was different than any other book i've ever read. I don't know anything about LSD, but this book made me feel like i know do. I really liked his writing style, even though it was confusing at times, because i think it kind of appeals to a wide range of people. It makes those of us who have never tried acid feel like we have, and it's an accurate description of how it feels to be on acid for those who have tried it. I think. But then again i don't know anything about acid so that could...more

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May 25, 2010 Connor Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is a serious trip.
I have always been curious about the early sixties culture. with the onset of psychedelic drugs and a radical shift in music. things seem to be really interesting then. my father always says things to the effect of "everyone thought they were expanding their minds, but really they were just hurting themselves.". now i'm sure that we have a better understanding of the effects of drugs on the mind, short term and long term, now. but i wasn't sure that everyone could thi...more

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Apr 19, 2010 E. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was going to write a review but Casey put it so eloquently below I figured why bother. Not that I almost ran off to a hippy commune with mirror pap smears, or even that I read the book 20 years ago.....I didn't, I read the first 100 pages yesterday and I got the gist.....But about the whole, geez hippies are kind of annoying thing.

I picked up this book because I was so blown away by Sometimes a Great Notion I wanted to know more about Kesey. What I found was he did too much acid to continue t...more

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Jan 09, 2010 skye rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hard to review in standard prose. This book, like very few works of art, elevated me to another level of consciousness. I mean that quite literally. I used to read T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" on the subway coming back from work into DC, and within a few stops I would be elevated - a poetry high. Kerouac's "On the Road" came next (summer of 06) - beat from long days of work in hot summer setting up apartments - beat - sunsets over the red line, walking home - elevated by the ecstatic prose.

Perh...more

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About Tom Wolfe

Wolfe was educated at Washington and Lee Universities and also at Yale, where he received a PhD in American studies.

Tom Wolfe spent his early days as a Washington Post beat reporter, where his free-association, onomatopoetic style would later become the trademark of New Journalism. In books such as The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, Wolfe delves into...more

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“Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script.” — 76 people liked it

“Put your good where it will do the most!” — 30 people liked it

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