Biography Essay

A writer who came of age on the West Coast during the late 1950s, Ken Kesey has been profoundly influenced by the Beats both in his life and in his work. Strictly speaking, he is not a Beat writer in his early books, although he admired Jack Kerouac and claims the influence of Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes, and William S. Burroughs on his prose style. Kesey is a pivotal figure between the Beats and the Hippies, the leader and chief chronicler of the activities of his associates, the Merry Pranksters, a group of friends including Neal Cassady who helped Kesey originate the "acid tests" that popularized the use of the drug LSD in psychedelic mixed-media "happenings" in California in the 1960s. As the leader of the Merry Pranksters, described by one newspaperman as a "day-glo guerrilla squad for the LSD revolution in California," he turned from...