Electric Kool Aid Acid Test

Wolfe, Tom James

ISBN 10: 0553234587 / ISBN 13: 9780553234589

Published by Bantam Books, 1982

About this Item

Mass-market paperback, published by Bantam. First published in 1968, this is the 1982 reprint. Classic 1960's counterculture 'New Journalism', about Ken Kessey and the Merry Pranksters and their journey on the Further bus. 372 pages, 4" x 7". No former ownership marks, no writing on the text pages. Not a remainder, not a library discard. Slight crease marks to the spine, no creases to the cover. Edges of the text block are clean, the binding is tight and square. Attached are some photos of the copy we have in our inventory.

Seller Inventory # 26-07715

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Electric Kool Aid Acid Test
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Publication Date: 1982
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0553234587
• ISBN 13: 9780553234589
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 303.907 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • 1960s
  • Essays

About this title

Synopsis

Vintage paperback

Review

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