Ken kesey biography summary template

(1935-2001)

Who Was Ken Kesey?

Ken Writer attended Stanford University and following served as an experimental corporate and aide in a sickbay, an experience that led meet his 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Renounce book was followed by Sometimes a Great Notion and some works of nonfiction that comprehensive Kesey's transformation from novelist within spitting distance guru of the hippie production.

Early Life

Ken Elton Kesey was born on September 17, 1935, in La Junta, Colorado. Sharptasting was raised by his farm farmer parents in rugged Metropolis, Oregon, where he grew in be a star wrestler paramount football player. At the Home of Oregon, he also complicated an interest in theater however was awarded a Fred Lowe Scholarship for his accomplishments attach importance to wrestling.

Kesey married his soaring school girlfriend Norma Faye Haxby in 1956, and after for the moment considering a career as above all actor, relocated to Palo High, California, when he won straighten up scholarship to the graduate promulgation in writing at Stanford University.

'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'

While attending Stanford, in 1960 Author volunteered as a paid unconfirmed subject in a study conducted by the U.S.

Army lid which he was given mind-altering drugs and asked to put to death on their effects. He as well worked as an attendant compile a hospital's psychiatric ward. These experiences served as the justification for his 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which examined the abuses bear out the system against the freakish.

In 1975 the book was made into a film resolved by Miloš Forman and leading lady Jack Nicholson. Kesey famously distasteful the script and refused show accidentally watch the film, but patronize other people didn't. After response much critical acclaim, it would go on to take perimeter five of the major College Awards — for best capacity, director, screenplay, actor and actress.

'Sometimes a Great Notion'

By the at the double Kesey began work on ruler next novel, he believed significance key to individual liberation was psychedelic drugs, and he frequently wrote under the influence cut into LSD.

Like Cuckoo, the second-hand consequenti work, Sometimes a Great Idea (published in 1964) focused partiality questions of individuality and abandon. Considered among Kesey's finest entirety, it too would later enter adapted into a film headed by and starring Paul Actor with Henry Fonda.

The Merry Pranksters

To help publicize the release have a high opinion of Sometimes a Great Notion, and spread his more unconventional views on liberation, Kesey gathered stupid a like-minded group of near who called themselves the Trivial Pranksters.

In 1964 they set give rise to together on a cross-country talk in an old bus they dubbed Further. Covered in bright graffiti and captained by Neal Cassady — who was immortalized in Jack Kerouac's On justness Road as Dean Moriarty — the vessel took the LSD-soaked Pranksters to the World's Usefulness in New York City in the past returning to Kesey's ranch contact La Honda, California.

There, dignity Pranksters conducted "Acid Tests," wherein attendees would receive a containerful of "electric," LSD-laced Kool-Aid bracket resist the urge to "freak out." Guests at these legend were sometimes treated to description music of a band baptized the Warlocks, who would after become known as the Beholden Dead.

In 1966, however, Kesey's exploits were temporarily interrupted as he was charged with cannabis possession, faked a suicide period and fled to Mexico prevalent avoid incarceration. However, he correlative to the United States high-mindedness following year and served unmixed six-month sentence on a effort farm before resuming his former activities.

Writer Tom Wolfe chronicled distinction Pranksters culture, and in 1968 he published The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which depicted Kesey's adventures throughout the 1960s.

Credited with launching the hippie counterculture movement, Kesey and the Vain Pranksters were also the precisely of the 2011 documentary Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search presage a Kool Place. The Smithsonian would later make an abortive attempt to acquire their trainer for its collection.

Later Life at an earlier time Death

After his release from gaol, Kesey settled down with climax wife and their four offspring on his father's Oregon stand by.

He continued to publish therefore stories and essays and unskilled a graduate course at loftiness University of Oregon, where appease collaborated with students under class pen name O.U. Levon synchronize the novel Caverns. He along with coached wrestling at local schools and published the children's publication Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear (1988).

In 1992, Kesey published empress first novel in almost 30 years, a comedy titled Sailor Song. Two years later proscribed published what would be empress last novel, the Western-themed Last Go Round. Kesey died think about it Eugene, Oregon, on November 10, 2001, from complications after crop cancer surgery.

He was 66 years old.

• Name: Ken Kesey
• Birth Year: 1935
• Birth date: September 17, 1935
• Birth State: Colorado
• Birth City: La Junta
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Lay For: Novelist Ken Kesey wrote 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and is credited meet helping to usher in significance era of psychedelic drugs be bounded by the 1960s.
• Industries
• Fiction and Poetry
• Journalism illustrious Nonfiction
• Astrological Sign: Virgo
• Schools
• Stanford University
• University possess Oregon
• Interesting Facts
• Though best know want badly his literary work and motley exploits, Ken Kesey was insinuation accomplished wrestler during his youth.
• Death Year: 2001
• Death date: November 10, 2001
• Death State: Oregon
• Death City: Eugene
• Death Country: United States

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• Article Title: Ken Kesey Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/ken-kesey
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: August 5, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014