Sailor Song [Hardcover]

Ken Kesey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1992

The author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest depicts the collaboration of a big-bucks Hollywood film company with a remote Alaskan Indian tribe in a rundown, twenty-first-century fishing community. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kesey ( One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ; Sometimes a Great Notion ) sets his latest grand, cosmic adventure early in the 21st century, complete with celefones, cardkeys, Mylar pumpsuits and scoot, the artificial stimulant of choice. Ike Sallas, "mental activist" and Backatcha Bandit of the ' 90s, lives in a trailer in the "neo retro" Alaskan fishing village of Kuniak with his fishing partner, Rastafarian Emil Greer. Kuniak is invaded by legendary film director Gerhardt Steubins, minions Clark Bstet no period Clark and Nicholas Levertov, and troops with plans to film the Eskimo legend The Sea Lion (a Kesey children's book). This "unstained cartoon caricature of mythic native life" contrasts with the "dirt and despair and perversion" of " real native life," according to Alice Carmody, matriarch of Kuinak DEAPs (Descendants of Early Aboriginal Peoples). His baroque humor in top form, Kesey skewers religious cults, organized lodges and land developers as the madcap adventures culminate in the phantasmogorical conclusion on the open seas when Ike is caught in a maelstrom. This is a gargantuan novel of epic dimensions that feeds on the need for love and heroes at a time when "the hero business ain't so hot." 100,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-- The sleepy little fishing village of Kuinak, Alaska, is transformed into a movie set when a Hollywood production company sails into port. The community, populated by Deaps (Descendants of Early Aboriginal Peoples) and a few adventurers from the Lower 48, is swept up by the glamour and promises of wealth. However, Nick Levertov's motives for choosing this site for filming are more complex than a simple return trip of a native son--and they're not all honorable. This master storyteller weaves a plot around a cast of characters as colorful as the aurora borealis. His writing style is complex and sometimes the story line changes abruptly without transition. The book will appeal to mature readers who can appreciate the humorous and bizarre aspects of the plot.
- Grace Baun, Robert E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (August 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670835218
• ISBN-13: 978-0670835218
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,612,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ken Kesey was born in Colorado in 1935. He founded the Merry Pranksters in the sixties and became a cult hero, a phenomenon documented by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He died in 2001.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Deuce steps in... just like real life, December 15, 2001

By 

Ken Egbert "Ken Egbert" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sailor Song (Mass Market Paperback)

Ken Kesey's recent passing made me look back at my favorite books of his and fellow trafficker in the anti-Divine Jack Kerouac and somehow I revisited SAILOR SONG first. The New York TIMES didn't like it when it was published in '93 but I recall thinking "They're just not on the bus... DUHHHH" and bought it anyway. The ride was stellar, and it still is. Kesey's tale of the last bunch of individualist crazies at the end of America (and the world too) has its flaws, and I agree with the other online reviews you will read here: the end has a deus ex machina look to it (not that one character, the bookish Billy the Squid, doesn't red-flag the reader with a warning mid-on; a spectacularly nervy aside), the romance subplot is a bit shaky, the air of the novel smacks of the NORTHERN EXPOSURE television show from a few years back, the end of Bad Guy Nick Levertov is not as well-described as it might be... but the central theme of a moneyed juggernaut sailing into an untamed, delightfully-chaotic-because-it's-meant-to-be backwater of America (whatever, as Jack K. said in his dedication in VISIONS OF CODY, that is) strikes a chord on my piano. In SAILOR SONG two halves of America (Babbitt versus Walt Whitman) collide, and thanks to the success of the Babbitt half over many years (the befouling of the natural world) the payback interrupts the flow of the novel. Another nervy trick from the old Prankster, but for me it works. Because as we can see from the disrupted weather patterns of the last 20 years, we are going to be in a similar situation very shortly. And Kesey's description of Mother Nature's payback to the human race is the best thing in the book. Well, not quite, but close. Ike Sallas is the tired hero, letting things swirl around him, stepping in at exactly the wrong moment to little effect, and his very ineffectuality is what makes him as real as he is here (most especially when he finds he has fans who take up his cudgel for him in the immediate vicinity). And the asides, some of them borrowed from Walt Kelly ("From here on down it's uphill all the way"), the Grateful Dead, Tom Pynchon, Rudyard Kipling, and Jack
Kerouac himself, all widen the scope into an 'American saga'
(yes, one of those) which may not be ON THE ROAD, but it isn't about finding oneslf by leaving. It's about finding oneself by living. A divine read. Thanks, Ken.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sailor Song: Where Art & Life Meet in the End, May 3, 2002

By 

Albert J. Miller (Beverly Hills, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sailor Song (Mass Market Paperback)

Up front: I'm a long-time fan of Ken's -- including the videos, the CDs, and his classic periodical SPIT IN THE OCEAN. I liked SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION a lot better as a book than a film. So that's where I'm coming from...

SAILOR SONG is superb, remarkable and unmatched in contemporary literature. Ken's grasp of the human condition is extraordinary: man/woman, inter-family, small town, international, global, you name it and Ken's got it in SAILOR SONG. It's an easier read than NOTION, but not as clearcut as NEST.

So many posts here question the ending; not me. I trust Ken ended this the way he saw fit, like the master he was. Life doesn't end cleanly, even though it begins with promise and evolves with careful plot. I don't think any other writer has addressed the scenario of the poles shifting, so while this isn't quite an "end of the world" tale, surely it's clear why Ken dubbed this his science fiction novel.

The characters are unforgettable, and yes the novel reads like a screenplay because it is so extraordinarily vividly written. There are plot twists and curlicues galore -- that's the skill and scope of Kesey coming across. SAILOR SONG, like his other novels, is brimming with quotable phrases and passages that ache for outboarding and inclusion in BARTLETT'S BOOK OF QUOTATIONS. He's that good.

The scenario overall is unforgettable, and the pace is so beguiling that despite the novel's length; when it was over my ONLY regret was that there wasn't more superb literature to keep me riveted. If you are anxious to be engaged, challenged and rewarded by a book time and again, savor SAILOR SONG to the last drop. There ain't no dregs here, just sweet wonderful language coming from a mind without equal. Ken's passing last November was a loss without measure, but we readers are blessed with these words. Enjoy!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A song to awaken the Prankster in us all ! ! !, November 28, 1998

By 

Matt P([e-mail]) (Earth of the Milky Way) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sailor Song (Mass Market Paperback)

This is Keysey's most brilliant comentary on the present state of affair of the global village as seen from the not to distant future.