Ken Kesey – 1935-2001

Early in the 1960s, Kesey was a paid experimental subject at a Veterans Administration hospital, who was given psychedelic drugs and reported on their effects. Combined with his work as an orderly in the hospital, this experience inspired his 1962 breakthrough novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (made into a popular film in 1975). Most of Kesey’s subsequent writing was autobiographical and often recounted drug-charged travels with the Merry Pranksters, a kind of commune who journeyed together in a psychedelically decorated bus during the 1960s and became symbolic of that era, its ideals, and its foibles.