When Ken Kesey died in 2001, the literary world mourned the loss of this great American Writer from the Pacific Northwest; while still remaining unsure on the criteria to use in studying his novels and other works. Author of three major novels: One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest, Sometimes A Great Notion, and Sailor's Song, as well as, numerous essays and other shorter experimental works; Kesey used the technique of subconscious writing to explore previous unnamed areas of the human mind and psyche. He also used the expression of this form of creative narrative to portray characters at odds with their society in various situations, to create characters who refuse to give up unique aspects of their personalities against societal constraints; set by the conformism determined by the standards of doctrine in the military industrial complex during the ebbing days of the cold-war era. Through this catharsis, he expresses with the beautiful imagery in his poetry and prose a pathway out of those boxes set by these doctrines for freemen seeking a sense of rebirth in this eden of America. It is this expression of individualism that sets Kesey apart with-in the archives of world literature as an American Writer.
An author for lost souls, Kesey took the narrative of the subconscious into unseen regions of literature, and found a place of rest for their wanderings. Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway may have used this narrative technique to define the boundaries of their own lost generation, but Kesey found his lost brethren on the long forgotten country backroads of the American West, and helped give them the key to their salvation.
His real journey starts on June 14, l964. With the beginnings of his bus trip across the country, accompanied by his merry prandsters, Ken Kesey uses his now infamous bus, driven by Neal Cassidy, to take his generation on a trip of the literary mind. It would also prove to unite two literary movements, whose origins correlated with each other on the Western and Eastern coasts. By l964, the beat sounds had begun to grow into a major literary movement that had become divided into two camps: one centered in the northern pacific coastal region stretching from Portland to San Francisco, and the other taking roots in New York City. De- fined by different writing styles, techniques, and cultural attitude; these two models of thought were about to merge into the landscape of a generation. The symbolism of the bus trip proved to be an accidental expression of poetry, a search for teh self, a proclamation of the journey taken by
