The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
by Tom Wolfe

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Book Summary Information

Author: Tom Wolfe
Edition: Paperback
Published: 1999-10-05
ISBN: 0553380648
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Bantam

Book Reviews of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Book Review: I have an... wait, no... YES! I have an idea.
Summary: 3 Stars

This is a benchmark of non fiction. From reading it, one can understand why. This book has an insane and inspiring stylistic prose, but that isn't to say it isn't flawed. I personally think it rambles a bit, repeats itself, but such is the nature of a hallucinogenic experience. This book is now over forty years old and still seems rather fresh. I can't think of a single non fiction article, or book for that matter I have read in my life time that is as wild as this one... maybe "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas", but that would be the only book comparable.( Ironically, Hunter S. Thompson did lend some notes to Tom Wolfe for this book, as stated in the end.)

Still, in the end, I do think this book has a bit of that "style over substance" thing. In the end, I'm not left with much besides the style. I read about a lot of hallucinogenic drug use, some of which was interesting( see "The Unspoken Thing" chapter) and some of it not. The story was funny at times, and it gave me quite a laugh. But I didn't experience many epiphanies while reading it.

But these people, these Pranksters, sure did have a funky zest for life that is rather infectious. You can certainly feel that much in the space of these pages. This is a fun read, but unless you are a fan of the time and place in which it takes place, it is probably best sticking to alternate and condensed texts on the subject.

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Summary of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

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

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.

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