Last Go Round is a rip-roaring novel intended more for readers' entertainment than for in-depth analysis. Nevertheless readers should enjoy responding to the characters and discussing the effectiveness of the first person point of view. The novel also raises the issue of the blurring of fact and fiction characteristic of many contemporary novels, such as those by Norman Mailer and William Styron.

1. A reviewer described Last Go Round as "a hodgepodge affair, illconceived and poorly crafted." Do you agree with that assessment?

2. Is Kesey and Babbs's choice of presenting their tale as the reminiscence of an almost ninety-year-old former rodeo champion who returns to the Pendleton Round Up effective? Do you like the link the authors draw between Jonathan Spain's literally riding the rails and his riding the rails of his memory?

3. Of what significance are the Civil War allusions in naming the young hero Johnathan...