The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test Book

They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. By taking On the Road's hero Neal Cassady as his driver on the cross-country revival tour and drawing on his own training as a magician, Kesey made Further into a bully pulpit, and linked the beat epoch with hippiedom. Paul McCartney's Many Years from Now cites Kesey as a key influence on his trippy Magical Mystery Tour film. Kesey temporarily renounced his literary magic for the cause of "tootling the multitudes"--making a spectacle of himself--and Prankster Robert Stone had to flee Kesey's wild party to get his life's work done. But in those years, Kesey's life was his work, and Wolfe infinitely multiplied the multitudes who got tootled by writing this major literary-journalistic monument to a resonant pop-culture moment. Kesey's theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test" soirees that launched The Grateful Dead required Wolfe's Day-Glo prose account to endure (though Kesey's own musings in Demon Box are no slouch either). Even now, Wolfe's book gives what Wolfe clearly got from Kesey: a contact high. --Tim Appelo, Amazon.comRead More

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  • Erin Britton10 November 2008

    Tom Wolfe"s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a fascinating Day-Glo dream of a book recounting the weird and wonderful people, pranks and LSD that were central to the iconic counterculture of sixties America. Searching for truth, insight and the perfect trip, Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo"s Nest) and his group of loyal followers, the Merry Pranksters, painted an old school bus and set off on a cross-country drive predominantly fuelled by LSD and other psychedelic drugs. Neil Cassady, hero of Kerouac"s On the Road, drove the bus. Dapper suited journalist Tom Wolfe was along for the ride but not the drugs. As Kesey would say, "He was on the bus but he wasn"t ON the bus". Wolfe captures perfectly the style of the Merry Pranksters with his mixing of insightful journalist reporting and the spontaneous prose style popularised by Jack Kerouac and, in doing so, truly brings the journey and experiences of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters to life. Not only do the acid tests take you inside the altered minds of various willing and unwilling average citizens, Wolfe also visits the consciousnesses of literary greats like Kesey, iconic figures like Neil Cassady and Alan Ginsberg, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, and a group of Hell"s Angels. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a breakneck journey across a hazy America in a rush of speed, a cloud of pot smoke, and a whirl of LSD induced hallucinations. All that remains to be decided, "Can YOU pass the acid test?"

  • Amazon

    The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test I looked around and people's faces were distorted...lights were flashing everywhere...the screen at the end of the room had three or four different films on it at once, and the strobe light was flashing faster than it had been...the band was playing but I couldn't hear the music...people were dancing...someone came up to me and I shut my eyes and with a machine he projected images on the back of m... Full description

  • Play

    I looked around and people's faces were distorted...lights were flashing everywhere...the screen at the end of the room had three or four different films on it at once and the strobe light was flashing faster than it had been...the band was playing but I couldn't hear the music...people were dancing...someone came up to me and I shut my eyes and with a machine he projected images on the back of my eye-lids...I sought out a person I trusted and he laughed and told me that the Kool-Aid had been spiked and that I was beginning my first LSD experience...

  • 0552993662
  • 9780552993661
  • Tom Wolfe
  • 17 February 1989
  • Black Swan
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 368
  • New edition
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