I first read the news while looking around at the headlines on CNN's web page, and after not seeing any major headlines of interest, looked into the sub-section entitled 'Other News' and saw at the top the words 'Cuckoo's Nest Author Kesey Dies at 66.' My jaw hit the floor, my heart sank, and I fell into a kind of dumb stupor. I sat for a few minutes not knowing what to say, or what to think. Ever since my high school years, when I first developed my passion for literature, Kesey had been a hero to me, and to my friends, a small group of quasi-literati in a white-collar suburban town in the Bible belt.
The first I ever read of Kesey was in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, shortly after reading Kerouac's On the Road, and was fascinated by everything about his life. I hadn't even read one of his books yet. I soaked in the energy and ambition that he had in the Sixties. I admired him and his band of Merry Pranksters, who ran across the country fueled by LSD, Marijuana and an endless creative drive to go 'Furthur' beyond the realms of normal consciousness, to alter the way in which we look at the world, to push from the art of the page, and the canvas, to a living and acting art that constantly existed, and was defined not by artificial creation, but by constant action.
That evening I called my best friend Josh in Missouri to see if he had gotten the news. We both talked about Ken for a bit, exchanging how we had reacted.
"I think I'll drink a beer for him tonight." He said. "I can't think of anything else to do. I looked at his autograph in my book for a while. I didn't think I could actually treasure it any more than I used to."
Now, sitting here at my computer, trying to come up with some kind of meaningful tribute to the man who did so much for me, without my actually knowing him. I remember the ways in which we tried to emulate him, while we were still in high school, before we all moved apart. There was at the time, a large group of us, that consisted of our friends Karaugh, Cathryn, Josh Siegel, Josh Aldrich, Kriston, Aaron, Kristi, Jacqueline, Nick, and myself (my apologies if I've left anyone out.)
