Ken Kesey Biography – life Story, Career, Awards, Age, Height

Personal Background

Ken Kesey most usually is characterized because the literary figure who bridged the Beat motion of the 1950s with the 1960s counterculture. This recognition springs from his literary themes of revolt in opposition to societally imposed repression, which hyperlinks him with the Beats, and his non-public stories as a volunteer within the U. S. Government’s experiments with psychotropic and hallucinogenic capsules. These latter stories, coupled along with his penchant for communal residing and rock track, make sure his reputation as a preeminent spokesperson for the 1960s counterculture.

Kesey changed into born in La Junta, Colorado, in 1935. While he was still a infant, he moved to Oregon together with his circle of relatives. After receiving his bachelor’s diploma from the University of Oregon in 1957, Kesey enrolled in the creative writing software at Stanford University. It changed into all through his scholar tenure at Stanford that Kesey volunteered as an lively participant inside the trying out of the psychotropic LSD and the hallucinogens mescaline (derived from the mescal or peyote cactus) and psilocybin (mushrooms) at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital.

Kesey believed that the belief-altering LSD (in comparison to the actual hallucinogenic qualities of mescaline and psilocybin) turned into a device useful for transcending rational consciousness and attaining a better level of awareness. Aside from Timothy Leary, whom Kesey met briefly in the course of the Further Tour mentioned in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, no man or woman changed into a more vocal proponent for the use of LSD throughout the 1960s.

Kesey’s interest in altered cognizance led him to simply accept a position in a intellectual clinic. While the process allowed him adequate opportunity to write uninterrupted, it also delivered him to numerous those who could serve as models for characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kesey also ingested LSD (known as “tripping”) even as interviewing the patients on the way to benefit perception into their altered perceptions of the arena. He even convinced a friend to administer electroshock therapy to make certain an accurate depiction in his novel.