A look into the strange life and legacy of
the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest
Kesey’s Early Life
Ken Kesey was born in
Colorado, but grew up in
Oregon.
This also happens
to be where One Flew Over
The Cuckoo’s Nest takes
place.
The Oregon State Mental Hospital
Kesey’s College Years
Ken went on to the
University of Oregon where
he became a star wrestler
and lead actor in college
plays.
He married Faye, his
high school sweetheart
during his freshman year.
Voted Most Likely to Succeed
as a Senior in High School
After College
Ken and Faye
went to Hollywood
to try to land a
part in a movie.
However, Ken couldn’t
resist the urge to write
and enrolled in Stanford
in 1958 on a creativewriting fellowship.
The Move to Perry Lane
Ken and Faye moved into
a rundown house on Perry
Lane, a cluster of two-room
cottages inhabited by young,
promising intellectuals.
Ken’s best friend on Perry
Lane told him about some
experiments the local VA
hospital was conducting
with hallucinogenic drugs.
The doctors had never taken
LSD and couldn’t understand
the effects and feelings. Ken
managed to provide all his
friends on Perry Lane with LSD.
They paid Ken $75 a day to
come in and lie down in a
bed while they gave him a
series of capsules of
placebos, Ditran, and LSD.
Kesey’s Job on the Psych Ward
Ken got a job
covering the night
shift at a psychiatric
ward in order to write
his first book, Zoo,
which was never
published.
Once he got there and
started interacting with
patients, he discovered the
punishing abuse of power
by the system.
Kesey’s inspiration for Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken would come to work
high on LSD in order to
try to achieve a similar
state of mind as his
patients.
It was during one of these
acid trips that he envisioned
his narrator, Chief Broom, a
deaf-mute, paranoid
schizophrenic Native American mental patient.
Immediate Success
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the first
book that Ken published (in 1962). The book
was immediately adapted into a successful
stage production a year later, and then became
and Academy Award winning film, sweeping five
major Oscar categories in 1975.
Kesey’s opinion of film
Ken was originally involved in creating the film, but left two weeks into production.
He claimed never to have seen the movie because of a dispute over the $20,000 he
was initially paid for the film rights.
Ken was apparently angered by the fact that, unlike the book, the film was not
narrated by the Chief Bromden character, and he disagreed with Jack Nicholson
being cast as Randle McMurphy (even though Nicholson went on to win Best Actor)
Jack Nicholson as
Randle Patrick McMurphy
6’ 7” Will Sampson as Chief
Bromden
Kesey wanted Gene
Hackman to play
McMurphy
The Move to La Honda, California
After the success of
One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken
and Faye moved to
La Honda. His
Perry Lane friends
followed and their
communal LSD
culture continued.
They nicknamed themselves
the Merry Pranksters.
After completing his second novel, Kesey
and his Merry Pranksters bought an old
school bus for $1500, painted it in Day-Glo
colors and rigged it up with speakers,
microphones, and recording equipment in
order to rap off of the sounds along the
way.
They drove across country
getting high and recording
home video footage for The
Movie! and wore masks and
little to no clothing on the trip,
picking up hitchhikers and
strangers to join in the
experience.
Legal Trouble
Less than a year later, Ken and his 13
Merry Pranksters were arrested for
marijuana possession. Ken was
sentenced to six months in jail and three
years of probation.
While released on
bond, Ken initiated
his first Acid Test. It
was a multimedia
acid extravaganza
with movie footage
and asynchronous
sounds being
flashed in an
enclosed area.
More Acid Tests
Ken would
recruit at
Grateful Dead
Concerts, and
the Dead even
came to the
second test
after one of
their shows.
During this
time, Ken
became a
celebrity
among the
young
American
beatnik
culture.
Ken Kesey
The Final Acid Test
Participants
Avoiding Another Arrest
In order to mislead the police and avoid jail time
after two subsequent marijuana arrests, Ken faked
his own suicide, leaving a note with his abandoned
truck near an oceanside cliff.
He escaped to Mexico, but when he returned to the
United States eight months later, he was arrested
and sent to prison for five months.
Kesey’s Later Life
Shortly after being
released from prison
following the Mexico
escape, Ken renounced
his image as a drug hero.
He said it was time to
graduate to something
else and moved to a farm
in Oregon with Faye.
They had 3 children.
He died in 2001 at age
66 from liver cancer.
Faye Kesey by her husband
and son’s gravestones
Kesey’s iconic stature
Ken and his Merry Prankster’s became known as the link
between the Beatnik generation of the 50s and the
hippies of the 60s. Although he published 11 books,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was by far his most
well-known and successful literary work.
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