Chapter I Black Shiny FBI Shoes Summary and Analysis

Tom Wolfe writes about Ken Kesey, a promising young writer, during Kesey's experimentations with LSD from about 1961 to 1964. Kesey leaves his home in Oregon to do post-graduate work on a creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. There he encounters LSD and other psychoactive drugs while volunteering as a research subject. The effects of LSD on Kesey's perceptions draw him and others into the regular use of LSD, marijuana and amphetamines. A small version of the drug culture that is to follow develops.

In the late 1960s, Tom Wolfe seeks out Ken Kesey, drug-culture icon, for an interview. Kesey is to be let out of jail on a bond that his friends have raised by putting up three houses for collateral. Kesey has been charged with two counts of marijuana possession. The...