Key Notes: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Harold Bloom

The imaginative characters and innovative story structure made Ken Kesey's debut novel ripe for commentary. Take a closer look at One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which also enjoyed critical success as a play and a film.

The title, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Ken Kesey's One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Ken Kesey, a chronology of the author's life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University.

Paperback

Published December 12, 1986

About the author

Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.