Ken Kesey & Sacramento

When Ken Kesey spoke in Sacramento on the Quad at Sac State in the halcyon days of love, beads, and flower power, I was there, and it was a memorable event in my life forming the foundation of the thinking that led me to a lifetime of work in the nonprofit sector.

But that was not all he did while visiting Sacramento, as the last paragraph in this excerpt from an article about him & Jack Kerouac in the American Scholar notes.

An excerpt.

“If the 1950s and ’60s belonged to Jack Kerouac, then the ’60s and ’70s belonged to Ken Kesey. Both of them were my clients, and I liked and admired each of them. Although they differed in age, personality, and writing styles, they overlapped as writers of their times, and there was room for both. Each man was an iconoclastic thinker whose writing and philosophy inspired passionate devotion in his readers.

“Before I ever met Kesey, Tom Guinzburg, president of Viking Press, called me one day in 1961 to ask whether Kerouac would write a blurb for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey’s first novel. Tom had bought the book, but Viking had not yet published it. Publishers are always looking for well-known writers to offer positive comments for the book jacket or a press release. A blurb can be particularly helpful if readers feel there is a creative relationship between the two writers. I had no idea whether Kerouac would help, because I couldn’t remember his having blurbed before, but I didn’t think he would be offended if I asked. I thought he might even be flattered. So I told Tom to send me the manuscript. I read it before passing it on to Jack, and I knew right then that I wanted to work with Kesey. His novel was a bold, creative story of what happens in a mental institution—a very daring subject for his time. In the end, Jack did not write a blurb; he felt uncomfortable doing it, perhaps not wanting to get into that arena and all that went with it, and I respected that….

“Kesey had an open mind, but once he had made up his mind, he stuck to it. People often associate One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with the movie and Jack Nicholson’s outstanding performance in it. But Kesey never saw it. Shortly before the movie was released, he and Faye met with a studio lawyer to clear up questions related to its future earnings. The lawyer managed to offend both Ken and Faye, and at one point he became so irate with Ken that he yelled, “When the movie comes out, you’ll be the first in line to see it.” Ken just glared at him and swore to himself he would never see it—and he never did.

“When I was with him in New York City in 2001, a few months before he died, he still hadn’t seen the movie that so many people associate with him. We were sitting in the Royale Theater with David Stanford, Ken’s editor and longtime friend, and a reporter for The New York Times who was doing a story about Ken. We were watching a revival of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company from Chicago. I could tell that Ken was interested in the performance but not very enthusiastic about it. So I asked him, “Ken, what’s the best theatrical performance of Cuckoo’s Nest you’ve ever seen?” Without a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Sacramento High School.” I was really surprised. And then he added, “They caught the ambiance better than anyone before or since.” Age hadn’t changed him or dimmed his perception in any way. He was the same Ken I had come to know so well.” (highlighting added)