Reviews

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  By Alex Crawford - September 19, 2012 6:57 pm Log in to Reply

  There are plenty of reviews one can find which will tell you about the contents of this book. Suffice it to say, Wolfe tells the story of Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, and the acid tests. However, in writing this book, Wolfe wrote so immersively as to make the events being recounted almost a second-thought. I frequently found myself having to reread chapters of the book, as I’d gotten so caught up in the experience of reading the book that I was missing out on the content itself. The stream-of-conscious style of writing employed, with its frequent, seemingly off-topic interjections, bouts of poetry, and generally non-literary voice left me surfing along without a care, enjoying the book for so easily melding my mind with (so many) someone else’s.

  There’s a lot more to the book than just all this feely-stuff that I’m so eager to blather on about, however. It serves very well as a history lesson for the radically-inclined-but-uninitiated. There are so many other people and groups mentioned but never discussed in length that, if one were to take notes, it would take some time to run out of venues for continued research or reading or whatever you may want. In addition, it captures the mood of the mid-60s and presents it in such vivid detail, that reading through it you feel as if you’re actually living back-in-the-day.

  In summary: read this bad boy ASAP!