The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test [Paperback]

Tom Wolfe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 1999

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Tom Wolfe is a groove and a gas. Everyone should send him money and other fine things. Hats off to Tom Wolfe!"--Terry Southern

"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is not simply the best book on the hippies, it is the essential book . . . the pushing, ballooning heart of the matter . . . Vibrating dazzle!"--The New York Times

"Some consider Mailer our greatest journalist; my candidate is Wolfe."--Studs Terkel, Book Week

"A Day-Glo book, illuminating, merry, surreal!"--The Washington Post

"Electrifying."--San Francisco Chronicle

"An amazing book . . . A book that definitely gives Wolfe the edge on the nonfiction novel."--The Village Voice

"Among journalists, Wolfe is a genuine poet; what makes him so good is his ability to get inside, to not merely describe (although he is a superb reporter), but to get under the skin of a phenomenon and transmit its metabolic rhythm."--Newsweek

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (October 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553380648
• ISBN-13: 978-0553380644
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (167 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #119,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom Wolfe is the author of more than a dozen books, among them such contemporary classics as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his B.A. at Washington and Lee University and a Ph.D. in American studies at Yale. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

112 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Reading Enjoyment, June 23, 2000

By 

Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Paperback)

I've savored just about every word this man's ever written. I still vividly recall him at a lecture he gave in Berkley in 1972 standing at the lectern in his white Gatsby suit, starched pink shirt and nattily knotted tie. I can't recall the ostensible topic. He covered so much ground and had such a wealth of ideas and insights that the topic was irrelevent anyway. He's always been our keenest observer of American culture, on subjects ranging from hippies, art snobs, wall street, the space race, to the Southern nouveau-riches.

In terms of unadulterated reading enjoyment, however, this book is still my favorite. He captures the era perfectly. This was the period in the mid-sixties when the hippie philosophy and lifestyle was still genuine, before it had become commercially exploited by the mass media, before Manson and Altamont and the seeds of evil. It was an uncorrupted, pure, joyous movement and moment. Owsley was the bay area chemist who produced hits of Sandoz-quality acid that sent the children out dancing blissfully through the night and into the purple dawn. It truly looked like a brave new world. If you are young and can't undertand why former hippies wax nostalgic about it, it's primarily (at least to me) because that tiny era of innocence can never be recreated.

If ever there were a work of either fiction or non fiction that captured the essence, freedom, and expectation of a marvelous era, this is it!

One of the great non fiction works of the 20th century!

BEK

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get on the bus!, February 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Mass Market Paperback)

"You're either on the bus...or off the bus." This is the choice facing you as you begin to read Tom Wolfe's classic saga of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters as they test the boundries of consciousness and test the limits of other human's patience. What is almost as amazing as the lengths to which the pranksters went to enjoy their existence on Earth, is the style that Wolfe has chosen to narrate the adventures. Brillliantly blending stream of consciousness writing and a journalistic sense of description, Wolfe immerses himself in Kesey's world in an attempt to understand the thoughts of a group of adults who would paint a school bus with day-glo colors and trek across the United States with pitchers full of acid and a video camera keeping an eye on it all. Who could resist a chance to find out what it was like to spend a quaint evening in the woods reaching altered states of consciousness with a group of Hell's Angels, or taking a peek inside the world of the budding hippie stars led by a youthful Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Whether or not you approve of massive drug use will not impact your liking of this book, and for anyone who takes an interest in the counterculture movement this book is a must-read. Also acts as a perfect companion to Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." Now you must decide, "Can YOU pass the acid test?"

46 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Being There, June 23, 2000

By 

Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Paperback)

I've savored just about every word this man's ever written. I still vividly recall him at a lecture he gave in Berkley in 1972 standing at the lectern in his white Gatsby suit, starched pink shirt and nattily knotted tie. I can't recall the ostensible topic. He covered so much ground and had such a wealth of ideas and insights that the topic was irrelevent anyway. He's always been our keenest observer of American culture, on subjects ranging from hippies, art snobs, wall street, the space race, to the Southern nouveau-riches.

In terms of unadulterated reading enjoyment, however, this book is still my favorite. He captures the era perfectly. This was the period in the mid-sixties when the hippie philosophy and lifestyle was still genuine, before it had become commercially exploited by the mass media, before Manson and Altamont and the seeds of evil. It was an uncorrupted, pure, joyous movement and moment. Owsley was the bay area chemist who produced hits of Sandoz-quality acid that sent the children out dancing blissfully through the night and into the purple dawn. It truly looked like a brave new world. If you are young and can't undertand why former hippies wax nostalgic about it, it's primarily (at least to me) because that tiny era of innocence can never be recreated. The waters of cynisism have washed away all the bridges to that idyllic past. The era can, however, thanks to Tom Wolfe, be revisited. I urge you to take the tour.