Home

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

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

Product Details

  • Author: Tom Wolfe
  • Publication Date: 2008-08-19
  • Publisher: Picador
  • Product Group: Book
  • Manufacturer: Picador
  • Binding: Paperback, 432 pages
  • Features:
    • ISBN13: 9780312427597
    • Condition: NEW
    • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
  • Package Dimensions:
    • Dimensions: 820L x 540W x 90H
    • Weight: 65
  • List Price: $16.00
  • ISBN: 031242759X
  • ASIN: 031242759X

Buying Options

Sold by fictionaddiction: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Customer Reviews

Average Amazon User Rating: 4.5 stars

5 stars Good condition, prompt arrival 2010-03-03

Reviewer: S. Kroon

There were some creases in the front abd back cover but other than that I'm very satisfied with my purchase.

5 stars Your ticket to 2010-01-29

Reviewer: RichWriter

Tom Wolfe is one of the most engaging and genuinely original storytellers I've ever read. The story is a hoot but they way he tells it... is breathtaking.

Tom Wolfe is the real deal - he was there. I know, because I was there. I experienced that drugged soaked summer of '67 and no one captures it better than Wolfe.

Although some consider Wolfe a "journalist" he actually writes like a storyteller - a superb storyteller.

Richard A McCullough
[...]

5 stars Before raves were "in" there were acid tests 2009-11-07

Reviewer: F. Carter

Tom Wolfe does an admirable job of getting close to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. He follows them through varied adventures and chronicle such activities as the meetings of the Pranksters and Leary's Harvard group. A glimpse of the early Wizards acid test concerts is given also. The Wizards continued on afterwards for years as the Grateful Dead. Encounters with the Hells Angels are visceral and brutal.

This book is one way to get a glimpse of what was going down when people were turning on at the acid tests.

4 stars Couldn't be any longer or stranger trip 2009-09-07

Reviewer: Neil The Unreel

There are trips and then there are the trips that Kesey and the Merry Pranksters made and took while on the bus Further back in the early 1960's. Wolfe was just launching his career and this/these trip(s) was the perfect vehicle (pardon pun) to do so. Kesey is striving to turn the world on to the wonders of LSD and the bus Further brings his group - the Merry Pranksters & the drug to America. Wolfe writes in a demanding style of the language of his subjects. It is in Hippie-jargonese that Wolfe accounts for Kesey's life after the success of the novel "One Flew Over The Cuckoo Nest." Wolfe picks up the story after Kesey is first released from prison only later to be hunted to Mexico.
Encounters with the Hell's Angles and numerous law enforcement agencies are also accounted in this new-style of journalism. If the book has any short-comings it is precisely in the style that Wolfe presents. At times this style is entertaining, but too cumbersome at other times. It is unique approach and lays the foundation for some of his other better works (The Right Stuff, Bonfire of the Vanities)but doesn't entice the reader as it should. Good account of hippie life and one of the most influential writers of his generation.

4 stars Historic Fun 2009-09-07

Reviewer: Carl L. King

A classic bit of American history and a fun story. Anyone who has ties to psychedelia or enjoys learning about some of the events that made the 60s the unique decade that it was should read this book.

Log in