@@Book@@ The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test [[PDF]]
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
By : by Tom Wolfe
ratings : 65,440
ratings reviews : 1,860
reviews
Original Title : The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
ISBN : 0553380648 (ISBN13: 9780553380644)
Edition Language : English
Series : Ken Kesey
Paperback, 416 pages
Published October 5th 1999 by Bantam (first published 1968)
Characters : United States of America
Setting :
Description : Tom Wolfe's much-discussed kaleidoscopic non-fiction novel chronicles the tale of novelist Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters. In the 1960s, Kesey led a group of psychedelic sympathizers around the country in a painted bus, presiding over LSD-induced "acid tests" all along the way. Long considered one of the greatest books about the history of the hippies, Wolfe's Tom Wolfe's much-discussed kaleidoscopic non-fiction novel chronicles the tale of novelist Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters. In the 1960s, Kesey led a group of psychedelic sympathizers around the country in a painted bus, presiding over LSD-induced "acid tests" all along the way. Long considered one of the greatest books about the history of the hippies, Wolfe's ability to research like a reporter and simultaneously evoke the hallucinogenic indulgence of the era ensures that this book, written in 1967, will live long in the counter-culture canon of American literature.
Literary Awards :
REVIEWS :You know those books that blew your mind in high school? Like Siddhartha or anything by Bukowski or Nietzche and you read it in a cafe trying to look cool to the older hippies who ran the place and one of them sleazed up to you and said, "you have beautiful skin" and gave you a copy of Tom Wolfe's book on the Merry Pranksters and tried to get you to go out back and smoke a suspiciously tangy looking joint which you delcline but take the book, and read it and are briefly tempted to run off to a I think this should have been half the length. Most pages seemed as though Tom Wolfe was simply describing some seventies hippy picture in as much detail as possible. It would have been more effective if he just showed me the picture. A mega doozy! A unique faux/dopey emblem of hippie Americana that blows angelic trumpets in your face with the celebration of a dadaesque topsy-turvy rover's lifestyle. So, oh so VERY unique. Is it all nonfiction? Really?! Or is it a horror film in disguise (no, no, no, just hear me out!) wherein body snatchers captivate the fragile minds of the youth, ensnaring them in major LSD consumption, "intersubjectivity," codependent thinking and a fantastical creation of genuine communal attachment? The On the bus or off the bus?The trolley glided along the tracks. Hovering, floating, flying. The ticket checker, his name tag read Mitchell, had the head of a warthog. “Feed the bee”, he said. :::: “What?” Jeff seemed trapped in a powerful time space vortex. His hands looked rubbery, like Plastic. Plastic Man. But drawn by a meth freak. A bunny, half-gold, half-silver, Day Glo halo, blood dripping from its fangs. “Feed the bee”, she said. “Feed it now! It’s hungry.” Jeff turned to the other These nut-jobs actually came to Houston with their bus and parked it two doors down from my best friend in Houston. Around 1969, moon, Led Zeppelin touring, people taking LSD and sitting on the hill in Hermann Park staring at the sun. My older brother and sister would drag me along to look at the "hippies" ... then the next day in the paper would be another story of a young Houston man who had become blind forever by roasting his retinas with pupils wide open looking at the sun. Guess I should "What we are, we're going to wail with on this whole trip."What Ken Kesey is is a prick, so let's not get any delusions about that. But most great leaders are pricks, and the case Wolfe is making in this masterful biography is that Kesey, in his way, was a great leader. His early days on the Furthur bus, discovering LSD and inventing the psychedelic movement, come off like Stanley or Shackleton: explorers in new lands, leading a ragtag but brave band of adventurers into dangerous frontier This book was a huge disappointment. It's hard to believe that a book that included so many interesting people, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsbergh and Neal Cassady just to name a few, could be so tedious and uninteresting. Wolfe's descriptions are clunky and monotonous. This is a guy who is about as square and straight as they come attempting to describe to his readers what it was like for Kesey and the merry pranksters to be high on acid and most of it reads like a hollow impersonation of Jack Kerouac. I love anything to do with the hippie movement (I'm looking at the era through idealist eyes but it was such a time of great change, great music, great clothes and freedom). After my midterm on Tuesday I was lucky enough to find an old '68 edition of this book being given away for free at the student trade shelf, and it was excellent. Bizarre, funny, interesting and unforgettable, The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test is one of the strangest things I've ever read but also one of the most addictive I enjoyed this book. I grew up partially on the peninsula with a father who was pretty involved in the counter culture. I ran around at 12 in a black corduroy cape with a sparkly Mylar dot on my forehead.. and when Ken Kesey's bus pulled up in our driveway in Barron Park and he and the Pranksters melted out I thought the circus had arrived.I read Electric Kool Aid Acid Test soon after it came out and I thought Tom Wolfe really captured the feeling of the times. It was exciting for me to read To me, nothing says Christmas better than trippy colors mixed with love, peace, and harmony. Turn on the lights and turn yourself on, find the bus and/or Santa's sleigh, and it's truly the season to be jolly!... and freak out the squares, man.Break the mold in our lives, put on the day-glow, THINK DIFFERENTLY, and DEFY EVERYTHING! It's CHRISTMAS-ish. :) Let's check out those elvish helpers...The Merry Pranksters! Ken Kesey (un)led this band of social explorers took so many mind-altering trips excerpt from a history paper I wrote on this book, which I posted to dcbooks:"While the book doesn’t hold answers, it is a great read for anyone who has ever been part of a subculture. It puts the story out there in a way that is honest and fair, showing not just the idealism, but also the grime and the violence and the difficulties of rebellion against the norm and the inherent dangers in basing a movement on a mind altering drug. It might be easy to reject the story as a tale of mistaken "I don't want to be rude to you fellows from the City, but there's been things going on out here that you would never guess in your wildest million years, old buddy..." Oh, to having lived in the Sixties. All the things people whisper and get reminiscent about today comes alive in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. It certainly was a ride, in the most literal sense of the word.I mean, this book is nuts. Crazy. Insane. Tom Wolfe presents his experience of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry First time around, this book positively made me want to try acid. Jury's still out on that one, folks. This is one of the popular books of adolescence which I didn't get around to reading until an adult, inspired, in part, by having seen the movie version of Kesey's Cuckoo's Nest. I would have liked it more as a teenager.Now, forty some years after publication, Electric is a bit of an historical curiosity. As much as the writings of Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert or Alan Watts, it substantially contributed to the creation in the public's eye of the counter-culture. As a kid I would.
Posting Komentar