33 Facts About Ken Kesey

Ken Elton Kesey was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure.

Ken Kesey considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.

Ken Kesey began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960 after completing a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later.

Ken Kesey mentored the Grateful Dead throughout their incipience and continued to exert a profound influence upon the group throughout their career.

In 1965, after an arrest for marijuana possession and faking suicide, Ken Kesey was imprisoned for five months.

Between 1974 and 1980, Kesey published six issues of Spit in the Ocean, a literary magazine that featured excerpts from an unfinished novel and contributions from writers including Margo St James, Kate Millett, Stewart Brand, Saul-Paul Sirag, Jack Sarfatti, Paul Krassner and William S Burroughs.

When Ken Kesey was 10 years old, the family moved to Springfield, Oregon in 1946.

Ken Kesey was a champion wrestler in high school and college in the 174-pound weight division, and almost qualified to be on the Olympic team, but a serious shoulder injury halted his wrestling career.

An avid reader and filmgoer, the young Ken Kesey took John Wayne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Zane Grey as his role models and toyed with magic, ventriloquism and hypnotism.

Additionally, with Faye's approval, Ken fathered a daughter, Sunshine Kesey, with fellow Merry Prankster Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams.

Ken Kesey had a football scholarship for his first year, but switched to the University of Oregon wrestling team as a better fit for his build.

In 1957, Ken Kesey was second in his weight class at the Pacific Coast intercollegiate competition.

Ken Kesey remains in the top 10 of Oregon Wrestling's all-time winning percentage.

Unbeknownst to Ken Kesey, who applied at Hall's request, the maverick literary critic Leslie Fiedler successfully importuned the regional fellowship committee to select the "rough-hewn" Ken Kesey alongside more traditional fellows from Reed College and other elite institutions.

Cowley was succeeded the following quarter by the Irish short-story specialist Frank O'Connor; frequent spats between O'Connor and Ken Kesey ultimately precipitated his departure from the class.

At the invitation of Perry Lane neighbor and Stanford psychology graduate student Vic Lovell, Ken Kesey volunteered to take part in what turned out to be a CIA-financed study under the aegis of Project MKULTRA, a highly secret military program, at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital, where he worked as a night aide.

Ken Kesey wrote many detailed accounts of his experiences with these drugs, both during the study and in the years of private drug use that followed.

Ken Kesey frequently entertained friends and many others with parties he called "Acid Tests," involving music, black lights, fluorescent paint, strobe lights, LSD, and other psychedelic effects.

Ken Kesey came to regard the unpublished work as juvenilia, but an excerpt served as his Stanford Creative Writing Center application sample.

The inspiration for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came while Ken Kesey was working the night shift with Gordon Lish at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital.

Ken Kesey did not believe these patients were insane, but rather that society had pushed them out because they did not fit conventional ideas of how people were supposed to act and behave.

Ken Kesey originally was involved in the film, but left two weeks into production.

Ken Kesey claimed never to have seen the movie because of a dispute over the $20,000 he was initially paid for the film rights.

Ken Kesey loathed that, unlike the book, the film was not narrated by Chief Bromden, and he disagreed with Jack Nicholson's casting as Randle McMurphy.

In 1965, Ken Kesey was arrested in La Honda for marijuana possession.

Ken Kesey fled to Mexico in the back of a friend's car.

On January 17,1966, Ken Kesey was sentenced to six months at the San Mateo County jail in Redwood City, California.

Ken Kesey wrote many articles, books, and short stories during that time.

At a Grateful Dead concert soon after the death of promoter Bill Graham, Ken Kesey delivered a eulogy, mentioning that Graham had donated $1,000 toward a memorial to Jed atop Mount Pisgah, near the Ken Kesey home in Pleasant Hill.

In 1988, Ken Kesey donated $33,395 toward the purchase of a proper bus for the school's wrestling team.

Ken Kesey mainly kept to his home life in Pleasant Hill, preferring to make artistic contributions on the Internet or holding ritualistic revivals in the spirit of the Acid Test.

In June 2001, Ken Kesey was the keynote speaker at The Evergreen State College's commencement ceremony.

On October 25,2001, Ken Kesey had surgery at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene on his liver to remove a tumor; he did not recover and died of complications several weeks later on November 10 at age 66.