← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · toddbrendanfahey
Thread ID: 7663 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2003-06-27
2003-06-27 16:57 | User Profile
It's time to honor this American genius.
An ardent pro-lifer (called abortion a "karmic bummer") and proponent of drugs decriminalization. Kesey was an enigma to most; to my mind, he was the genuine inheritor of Thoreau. Passed away too young, aged 66.
[img]http://www.key-z.com/KESEY86.JPG[/img]
2003-06-27 17:08 | User Profile
My exclusive photo of Ken Kesey, Sept. 1992:
[img]http://www.fargonebooks.com/fgimages/kesey.jpg[/img]
2003-06-27 17:20 | User Profile
Stegner thought he was a fool.
What kind of genius throws away a gift? After "Sometimes A Great Notion", we're left with "Tricker the Squirrel". I think Thoreau would have held Kesey in abject contempt, and I seriously doubt he would have let Ginsberg hang on either.
Kesey was a talented writer who let it all go for nothing. At the end, he wasn't an enigma; he was just another drug casualty of the stupid generation of Hoffman, Ginsberg and Horowitz. Some legacy; he buys into the hippie fantasies created by Greenwich Village Jews and San Francisco homos.
2003-06-27 17:31 | User Profile
You know your own ass better than you know/knew Ken Kesey. (& I knew the man.)
Stegner taught Kesey in Kesey's graduate-degree stint at Stanford. Kesey was heads/tails ahead of the entire class; to this day, the most famous and accomplished writer ever to come out of Stanford's graduate-level Creative Writing program (54-years hence). I've read many of Stegner's interviews; he could be kind toward Kesey or cruel, depending on the time of the month.
As for Kesey's output: Have you penned One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) (and the masterful 1986 short story collection, Demon Box)? If not, shutcher hole and either contribute or accept that you're not even in Kesey's league.
P.S. Kesey was straight as the day is long and not Jewish. He'd written 3 books in the 8 years before his death, and was far from being a "drug casualty." Read my 1992 interview with him:
[url=http://www.fargonebooks.com/kesey.html]http://www.fargonebooks.com/kesey.html[/url]
2003-06-27 18:06 | User Profile
*Originally posted by toddbrendanfahey@Jun 27 2003, 13:31 * ** You know your own ass better than you know/knew Ken Kesey. (& I knew the man.)
Stegner taught Kesey in Kesey's graduate-degree stint at Stanford. Kesey was heads/tails ahead of the entire class; to this day, the most famous and accomplished writer ever to come out of Stanford's graduate-level Creative Writing program (54-years hence). I've read many of Stegner's interviews; he could be kind toward Kesey or cruel, depending on the time of the month.
As for Kesey's output: Have you penned One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) (and the masterful 1986 short story collection, Demon Box)? If not, shutcher hole and either contribute or accept that you're not even in Kesey's league.
P.S. Kesey was straight as the day is long and not Jewish. He'd written 3 books in the 8 years before his death, and was far from being a "drug casualty." Read my 1992 interview with him:
[url=http://www.fargonebooks.com/kesey.html]http://www.fargonebooks.com/kesey.html[/url] **
I have not and would not claim to know Kesey, regardless of how much reflected and unearned glory might hopefully accrue as a result.
I've read and witnessed enough of Stegner's comments on Kesey to know what he truly thought about Kesey. He quite rightly thought Kesey was a talent who had made a foolish lifelong mistake in eventually squandering his gift.
I haven't penned any of those works you mention, and neither have you. Not that you should have. But eventually the pretense of being a derivative hack catches up with even the most meticulous of imitators; it seems to be the fate of all the Hunter Thompson clones out in the literary world.
At least Kesey was an original.
2003-06-27 18:10 | User Profile
So, you never knew Kesey; you never interviewed him; you never hung out at his Farm and talked with him. Yet you feel that you "know" him through Wallace Stegner's contradictory comments about his former student (which may have been nothing more than spontaneous fulminations of jealousy, as the protege had eclipsed the Master)...
Try writing and publishing a couple/3 booklength works; get them reviewed; see how your stuff is perceived. Get back to us.
2003-06-27 18:22 | User Profile
*Originally posted by toddbrendanfahey@Jun 27 2003, 14:10 * ** So, you never knew Kesey; you never interviewed him; you never hung out at his Farm and talked with him. Yet you feel that you "know" him through Wallace Stegner's contradictory comments about his former student (which may have been nothing more than spontaneous fulminations of jealousy, as the protege had eclipsed the Master)...
Try writing and publishing a couple/3 booklength works; get them reviewed; see how your stuff is perceived. Get back to us. **
Perhaps animal tranquilizers have had their way with your reading comprehension. Once again, I'll state that I did not know or "know" Kesey and that I have never made a false or unverifiable claim to have done so.
As for Stegner, he may have been somewhat demanding but he never seemed to profess jealousy towards Kesey or others. He seemed to be quite comfortable with the Pulitzer for Angle of Repose, which was a well-deserved award. All done without the ingestion of Rodney King's cocktail of choice, which is more than can be said of some others.
If I am published and reviewed, you can be sure that you'll be among the first to know. As it stands now, I have no intention of attempting to publish; those without talent who insist on proceeding are often driven from their own country, tormented with self-doubt.
If only others who are less talented could be as honest with themselves, many trees could be saved for better use- and the public assailed with less incomprehensible nonsense masquerading as gonzo art.
2003-06-27 18:31 | User Profile
Yr green-eye is showing.
Mebbe 3 among 55+ reviewers "compared" my writing with that of Hunter S. Thompson. & mostly only along the lines of subject matter/era described.
Didn't you get the company memo? (not a lot to indicate that I've written anything derivative here, boy...):
[As for the reviews, you left [about 50] out of yr last post; here's a sampling]
Wisdom's Maw
Review excerpt by Tom Dolby, The Village Voice
"Fahey paints a vast tableau which includes virtually every major political and pop-cultural figure of the 1960s--from Jack Kerouac to Jack Kennedy, Aldous Huxley to Hunter S. Thompson... Do we smell a movie deal cooking with the acid?"
WISDOM'S MAW
by Todd Brendan Fahey Far Gone 1996; $16.95 222 pp; ISBN 0-9651839-0-4
Think of the 1960s as CIA mind control experiment. Part of this novel is about a man named Franklin, noticed by the government as a potential student leader, who is kept supplied with LSD and other drugs by his girlfriend, an undercover FBI agent. Among the guests at his commune/hippie pad are people like Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Hunter Thompson, similarly well supplied with drugs. Included is a look inside MKULTRA, where various high military and government officials occasionally sample the wares. A high-class black prostitute is used by the FBI for possible future blackmail against her customers, like the Supreme Court Chief Justice.
This is a really good, and really strange, sort of novel. The thought of the CIA feeding drugs to Americans is handled very plausibly. This is a fine one for those who like the stories a little weird, but also grounded in reality.
Reviewed by Paul Lappen 8/23/98
Wisdom's Maw
Midwest Book Review
The recreational use of mind altering substances began with the invention of fermented beverages somewhere toward the end of the stone age. With the coming of agriculture came the arrival of certain plants as a means for mind "expansion" experiences. The industrial age was also the era of man-made mind-bending pharmaceuticals. The "information age" is now well along in giving us "virtual realities" along with our chemical ones. So Todd Fahey's "acid novel" Wisdom's Maw is a work of complex, insightful, controversial fiction whose time has come. Wisdom's Maw alters convention reality and our inner mental landscapes with the combined finesse of a buzzsaw and and the accuracy of a laser beam. Wisdom's Maw is a page turner and a mind burner of a novel that will leave the reader mentally breathless. Wisdom's Maw is a head-trip on paper and destined to join other cult classics like "On The Road", "Stranger in a Strange Land", and is a kind of "Alice in Wonderland" for grownups in the 90s.
Wisdom's Maw
Review by James Kent, High Times
...All in all, Wisdom's Maw is quick-paced, engrossing, and at times quite dizzying. The casually sinister way in which LSD is gulped down by (and secretly slipped to) all parties involved fills this book to the brim with depravity, sex (lots of sex), chaos, paranoia, murder, and general bad craziness. The cold, unflinching way Fahey exposes the dark side of LSD use shows that he is certainly well aquainted with his subject matter.
Wisdom's Maw
Review blurb at HotWired.com
Wisdom's Maw is a deliciously paranoid novel about the CIA and LSD.
Wisdom's Maw
Reviewed by Michael Crown, Ink 19
This novel takes the premise that the drug counter-culture of the '60s was engineered by the CIA in an effort to undermine the political left, and spins it into a very entertaining read. By weaving together a "fictional" conspiracy around the Merry Pranksters, Project MK-Ultra, the Hell's Angels, Aldous Huxley, the CIA, and yet another twist on the JFK assassination, Fahey creates what could possibly be the first of a new genre -- a spy novel informed by the characters and events in popular/underground culture. It seems that Fahey uses real names where the character is dead and pseudonyms when they are not. Those familiar with the history will have fun figuring out who is who. He chooses Franklin Moore (a.k.a. Ken Kesey) as the central character, and we get to vicariously enjoy some of his "fictional" exploits as the story unfolds. A great deal of the fun with Wisdom's Maw is trying to separate the fact from the fiction, but as the story takes hold the distinction becomes less and less important. Possibly a bit like some of the chemically induced experiences Fahey's characters helped introduce to the masses.
Wisdom's Maw
Review by Tom Harper (Canadian writer; review syndicated in many newspapers)
Fahey blends reality and drug-induced fantasy, weaving a layered tapestry of themes, laying a mosaic of the tiles, tales and legends of the sixties. On occasion, it is somewhat disconcerting when well-known public figures walk through this work of fiction. But the author handles it in such a natural and unpretentious manner, that it works. And is sometimes hilarious. Though it makes it all the more difficult to discern truth from fantasy, not unlike an acid trip itself. No doubt some 'serious' critics will dismiss the book on this account, and attempt to trivialize its importance. If so, they ignore at their peril a very fine piece of sustained writing, an intricately plotted action adventure novel, and perhaps the first best history of that era yet written.
Wisdom's Maw
Review excerpt by Ernest J. Gaines (MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient; author, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman)
"...You have written a very controversial book here, and if it is published and read, you might have to answer some questions to some pretty big boys. I hope you have the backbone for it."
[...I could go on, but all I have left to say, "weisbrot," is, Hi, Asshole! :)]