Junebug BOTM: THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST by Tom Wolfe

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Junebug BOTM: THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST by Tom Wolfe

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month!
In this thread, we choose one work of ~~literature~~ absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of ~~literature~~ complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

Resources:

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org

- A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best.

SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/

- A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.

:siren:

For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. :siren:

Past Books of the Month

[for BOTM before 2015, refer to archives]

2015:
January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities
February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1.
March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger
April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem)
May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row
June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood
(Hiatus)
August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me
September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone
October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant
November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl
December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road

2016:
January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome
February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon
March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling
May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang
July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
August: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
September:Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
October:Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
November:Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
December: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

2017:
January: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
February: The Plague by Albert Camus
March: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
April: The Conference of the Birds (مقامات الطیور) by Farid ud-Din Attar
May: I, Claudius by Robert Graves
June: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
July: Ficcionies by Jorge Luis Borges
August: My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber
September: The Peregrine by J.A. Baker
October: Blackwater Vol. I: The Flood by Michael McDowell
November: Aquarium by David Vann
December: Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight [Author Unknown]

2018
January: Njal's Saga [Author Unknown]
February: The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
March: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
April: Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria
May: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov

Current:

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Book available here:

https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Kool-Aid-Acid-Test/dp/031242759X

About the book:

quote:

Ken Kesey . . . began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960 following the completion of a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later. During this period, Kesey participated in government studies involving hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline and LSD) in order to supplement his income.[3]

Following the publication of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he moved to nearby La Honda, California, and began hosting happenings with former colleagues from Stanford, miscellaneous bohemian and literary figures (most notably Neal Cassady), and other friends under the imprimatur of the Merry Pranksters; these parties, known as Acid Tests, integrated the consumption of LSD with multimedia performances. He mentored the Grateful Dead (the de facto "house band" of the Acid Tests) throughout their incipience and continued to exert a profound influence upon the group throughout their long career.

quote:

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe that was published in 1968. The book is remembered today as an early � and arguably the most popular � example of the growing literary style called New Journalism.

. . . .

Tom Wolfe chronicles the adventures of Ken Kesey and his group of followers. Throughout the work, Kesey is painted as someone starting a new religion. Due to the allure of the transcendent states achievable through drugs and because of Kesey's ability to preach and captivate listeners, he begins to form a band of close followers. They call themselves the "Merry Pranksters" and begin to participate in the drug-fueled lifestyle. Starting at Kesey's house in the woods of La Honda, California, the early predecessors of acid tests were performed. These tests or mass usage of LSD were performed with lights and noise, which was meant to enhance the psychedelic experience.

quote:

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is remembered as an accurate and �essential� book depicting the roots and growth of the hippie movement.[2]

The use of New Journalism yielded two primary reviews, amazement or disagreement. While The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was not the original standard for New Journalism, it is the work most often cited as an example for the revolutionary style.

(above links from wikipedia)

quote:

The book is about Ken Kesey, the American writer, author of the highly successful peyote-inspired novel and Broadway play "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," who while living the successful suburban bohemian life in Stanford, California, volunteered for $75 a day to be an experimental subject for "psychomimetic" drugs and found that LSD made him "see into people."

That was in 1959, and the experience, the LSD, the mescaline, the peyote, the IT-290, and the morning-glory seeds seemed to Kesey to open hidden doors of the mind. He gave up writing; he wanted to spread the psychedelic word and deed. In 1963 with the money from his Broadway play he bought a new place in La Honda, California, and invited his friends out to explore ". . . a considerable new message . . the blissful counterstroke." An LSD community called the Merry Pranksters was formed.

In 1964 he bought a bus, painted it yellow and orange, blue and red, called it "Furthur" (sic), and set off East to the New York World's Fair in it, sipping LSD (acid) laced orange juice (Kool-Aid), making a 40-hour-long film of what they were doing all the way across Arizona and Texas and the Deep South. This and other similar adventures are the subject of Wolfe's book. Wolfe sees it and sets it down in various ways. There is the story of Kesey, the stories of the other people, the story of their effect on music, society, and the law; the parallel of this group and their structure and philosophy to a religious movement; the whole pattern of American society is related to Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

The structure of the book is complex; the style is a triumph of stylistic art, in the old manner of setting style to subject. It should not be dismissed as sociological fashion writing, neither should it be put aside as yesterday's thing. What Wolfe is talking about is the fundamental way in which American society changed in the mid-1960s. Nobody before had attempted to explain so fully the how and why of the hallucinogens with such art and such painstaking care to detail and social accuracy. The book, for example, explains the sudden change of the Beatles' music; they had absorbed the Californian acid rock music. On a more serious level no one else has attempted such a serious appraisal of what it is about LSD which makes the experience seem so valuable yet be so incommunicable.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2014/may/02/tom-wolfe-electric-kool-aid-acid-test

quote:

The seminal 1968 chronicle of the counterculture is Wolfe�s account of living and traveling with the writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, in a day-glo bus equipped with loads of LSD. In today�s Los Angeles, 50 years after the book was published, that metaphorical bus is still rolling, but it looks very different: corporate-sponsored music festivals, luxury cannabis dispensaries, micro-dosing as a productivity hack, Goop-endorsed crystal healing, and the artfully staged Instagrams of #vanlife.

Wolfe made the case that the Acid Tests�LSD-laden parties with trip-enhancing experimental live music by the Grateful Dead, art nouveau visuals, black lights, and multi-color projections�laid the foundation for psychedelic style. And he anticipated, correctly, that the Merry Pranksters legacy would be idealized and imitated far beyond that moment:

https://quartzy.qz.com/1279051/tom-wolfes-electric-kool-aid-acid-test-still-holds-up-50-years-after-its-publication/

About the Author

quote:

Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930[a] � May 14, 2018) was an American author and journalist widely known for his association with New Journalism, a style of news writing and journalism developed in the 1960s and 1970s that incorporated literary techniques.

Wolfe began his career as a regional newspaper reporter in the 1950s, achieving national prominence in the 1960s following the publication of such best-selling books as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (a highly experimental account of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters) and two collections of articles and essays, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. In 1979, he published the influential book The Right Stuff about the Mercury Seven astronauts, which was made into a 1983 film of the same name directed by Philip Kaufman.

quote:

Wolfe also championed what he called �saturation reporting,� a reportorial approach in which the journalist �shadows� and observes the subject over an extended period of time. �To pull it off,� says Wolfe, �you casually have to stay with the people you are writing about for long stretches . . . long enough so that you are actually there when revealing scenes take place in their lives.�[13] Saturation reporting differs from �in-depth� and �investigative� reporting, which involve the direct interviewing of numerous sources and/or the extensive analyzing of external documents relating to the story. Saturation reporting, according to communication professor Richard Kallan, �entails a more complex set of relationships wherein the journalist becomes an involved, more fully reactive witness, no longer distanced and detached from the people and events reported.�[14]

quote:

Kurt Vonnegut said Wolfe is "the most exciting � or, at least, the most jangling � journalist to appear in some time," and "a genius who will do anything to get attention."[29] Paul Fussell called Wolfe a splendid writer and stated "Reading him is exhilarating not because he makes us hopeful of the human future but because he makes us share the enthusiasm with which he perceives the actual."[30] Critic Dwight Garner praised Wolfe as "a brilliantly gifted social observer and satirist" who "made a fetish of close and often comically slashing detail" and was "unafraid of kicking up at the pretensions of the literary establishment."[31] Critic James Wood disparaged Wolfe�s "big subjects, big people, and yards of flapping exaggeration. No one of average size emerges from his shop; in fact, no real human variety can be found in his fiction, because everyone has the same enormous excitability."[32]

quote:

"To try and fit into that scene would have been fatal, perhaps literally fatal," he explained. "Kesey had this abiding distaste for pseudo-hippies � the journalist or the lawyer or teacher who on the weekend puts on his jeans and smokes a little dope."

Wolfe said that Kesey would often test visitors and try to determine who among them was a "weekend hippie" and who actually followed the hippie lifestyle.

"He would say, 'All right, let's everybody get naked and get on our bikes and go up Route 1,' " recalled Wolfe. "They did. This separated the hippies from the weekend hipsters very rapidly. I didn't have to worry because I was in my three-piece suit with a big blue corduroy necktie and the idea that I was going to take any of this off for anybody was crazy."

"I have discovered that for me, it is much more effective to arrive in any situation as a man from Mars than to try and fit in," he said. "When I first started out in journalism, I used to try and fit in. ... I tried to fit into the scene. ... I was depriving myself of the ability of some very obvious questions if I fit in. ... After that, I gave it up. I would turn up always in a suit and just be the village information gatherer."

https://www.npr.org/2011/08/12/139383916/tom-wolfe-chronicling-countercultures-acid-test

Themes

There's a lot to talk about with this one and a lot of directions to go in. Culturally relevant (are the hippies still relevant? is their mythology? should it be?), stylistically revolutionary (is this "journalism" or "literature" ? Both or neither? ), intensely meta-textual (how much correlation is there between the Kesey and Cassady of this book, and the Dean Moriarty of On the Road or the McMurphy of Cuckoo's Nest?).

quote:

That�s what makes Acid Test such an important book � it�s a perfect meeting of minds. An absolutely modern story of an attempt to find new forms of expression, new forms of living, instigated by the most important prose-writer of his times and written up by the most ground-breaking, experimental journalist working in the country at that moment. Kesey and Wolfe: The Dream Team!

How do revolutions happen? How does an idea spread from one mind until it takes over an entire society? This is the only book I can think of where you can see that process at work. Written at almost the same time as it was happening, not in some fog of nostalgia or revisionism many years later. A revolution can�t be just a pet project of the intelligentsia � it also has to connect with some obscurely felt impulse and desire felt by the public at large.

. . . .

Perhaps one of the things we are witnessing in these pages is the point at which literature began to lose its pole position in the cultural landscape � for if one of its most lauded practitioners was finding it wasn�t doing it for him any more, where did that leave other modern novelists? Waiting in vain at a bus stop in the rain. In order to make his attempt at the Great American Artwork, Kesey had to get out into America itself. To feed off the energy being unleashed there by new technologies, new music, new drugs. The bus was famously painted with psychedelic designs and fitted out with recording equipment, sound systems and cine cameras, the better to capture this new America that was forming before their very eyes. What they were searching for was mysterious, it was nebulous, but it was undeniably powerful. And LSD seemed to make it more visible.

They hit the road on 17 June 1964. Very early for a psychedelic expedition. Think about it: in June 1964 the Beatles were still singing �Can�t Buy Me Love� � their own Magic Bus Experience wouldn�t take place until three years later when they made The Magical Mystery Tour for the BBC. Were they following Kesey�s example? Probably. Were the light shows at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in 1967 a more refined take on the effect produced by the makeshift light displays that accompanied the early Merry Pranksters� Acid Tests? Probably. What about the Hippy Convoy in the 80s? Easy Rider and all those other existential road movies of the late 6os? Where did those ideas come from? Read the book and decide for yourself. The effect and influence of the chaotic road trip documented in these pages are absolutely huge. It�s nothing less than a countercultural origin story.

The Acid Test is not just an engaging historical curio: the revolution it depicts the birth of is still happening
That�s why this book is not just an interesting period piece, an engaging historical curio: the revolution it depicts the birth of is still happening. We are not at the terminus yet.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/17/road-trip-how-tom-wolfes-acid-test-changed-the-way-we-see-the-world

quote:

It�s easy to feel nostalgic for the simpler world of the counter-culture 1960s. And in the midst of a new �new age��think Burning Man, post-work sound baths, and weekend ayahuasca retreats�our perception of its cultural precedents is often scrubbed clean, romanticized, and repackaged.

But diving back into Wolfe�s intricately constructed account is a reminder that it was all a lot more complicated than that�his stark documentation putting you right there, in the place and time. And that poo poo was messy.

. . .
When I first read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test as a kid, I too was struck by a whole other pattern�connections I had not previously perceived between the artists, writers, and musicians I loved. Jack Kerouac and the Grateful Dead, Neal Cassady and Hunter S. Thompson, Kesey and Wolfe himself. Reopening the book, I still feel the pull of those cultural currents, half a century later.

Of course, I now know that what Wolfe made appear so effortless in the Acid Test is no small feat. It may read like a monologue about an insane road trip with a head full of drugs, but it is also based on letters, recordings, interviews, photos, diaries, video footage, and conversations with dozens of sources. It�s a masterpiece of journalism, and I�m profoundly grateful to him for taking me on that trip.

https://quartzy.qz.com/1279051/tom-wolfes-electric-kool-aid-acid-test-still-holds-up-50-years-after-its-publication/

Pacing

Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law.

Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion.

References and Further Reading

On the Road by Kerouac and You Can't Win by Jack Black if you want the antecedents of the Beat and Hippie movements; note that Neal Cassady, the fictionalized central figure of On the Road, is also a primary character here.

Hunter S. Thompson if you want to explore "New Journalism" further (furthur).

Obviously, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Final Note:

Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book!

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Jun 6, 2018

# ? Jun 6, 2018 15:18

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# ? May 2, 2024 00:12

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

Just an added resource (though admittedly not a book), but the documentary The Other One spends almost half of its run-time exploring the events of this book from Bob Weir's ( rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead) perspective, with footage of the Merry Pranksters, their celebrations, and Neil Cassidy's insane bus-driving. There's a great scene where Weir treads lightly in trying to explain Neil Cassidy to his teenage daughters.

# ? Jun 7, 2018 00:53

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

I guess this one isn't proving as popular as I'd hoped.

I suspect people may be reluctant to read what sounds like Yet Another Boomer Retrospective, but I really do think this is a book worth reading. mostly as a case study in sociology -- it's not often that mass popular movements can be traced back to specific beginnings, and even rarer that a journalist of Wolfe's talent is on hand at the start to document it.

# ? Jun 17, 2018 01:47

Stuporstar: May 5, 2008; Where do fists come from?

I finished it a few days ago, I'm just bad about posting in these threads.

It's also a great example of the New Journalism. But tbh it got so tedious by the end, it's no wonder Kesey retired to a quiet life on a farm for the rest of his life, because the whole thing just got so tired. And it's funny how it was already that way before the 60s even ended.

Also, the historical postscript for the book should be "How a bunch of assholes ruined psychedelic theraputics for over 50 years."

# ? Jun 17, 2018 01:58

poisonpill: Nov 8, 2009; The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

people may be reluctant to read what sounds like Yet Another Boomer Retrospective

*Ding ding ding*
Also every other thing I've read by Wolfe feels like some hack freshman comp emulating New Journalism. I know that's cart before horse but I hate his style so much.

# ? Jun 17, 2018 02:27

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Hey already read this and posted my review in the vote thread vOv

# ? Jun 19, 2018 06:41

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Also

Stuporstar posted:

Also, the historical postscript for the book should be "How a bunch of assholes ruined psychedelic theraputics for over 50 years."

# ? Jun 19, 2018 06:42

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

poisonpill posted:

*Ding ding ding*
Also every other thing I've read by Wolfe feels like some hack freshman comp emulating New Journalism. I know that's cart before horse but I hate his style so much.

Tbh, while I liked The Right Stuff (despite a few how-could-he-really-have-known-that? reservations), the more I read about Wolfe, the more I dislike and distrust him. The stuff about Wolfe's PhD dissertation in this article comes to mind. The Vanity Fair article mentions it to portray Wolfe as a mischievous iconoclast in conflict with the stodgy fellow-traveler-of-fellow-travelers professors, and I can't say I have much sympathy for the professors, but the article still makes clear that Wolfe was guilty of some pretty serious dishonesty.

Vanity Fair posted:

To top it all off � he�d taken some license with the details. One outraged reviewer compared Wolfe�s text with his cited sources and attached the comparison. Sample Wolfe passage: �At one point �the Cuban delegation� tramped in. It was led by a fierce young woman named Lola de la Torriente. With her bobbed hair, leather jacket, and flat-heeled shoes, she looked as though she had just left the barricades. Apparently she had. �This is where our literature is being built,� exclaimed she, �on the barricades!� � Huffed the reviewer: �There is no description of her in the source, and the quotations do not appear in the reference.�

# ? Jul 2, 2018 23:07

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound