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4 unusual facts about Ken Kesey


Jeremy Brooks

Writers like Ken Kesey, Robert Stone (a close friend of Brooks), Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegutt, spoke the language that people wanted to hear.

Malcolm Cowley

Cowley taught the Stegner Fellowship graduate class at Stanford University in the fall of 1960; among his students were such future luminaries as Ken Kesey, Peter S. Beagle, and Larry McMurtry.

Steve Aylett

The book traces his career through thinly disguised satires on a number of well-known writers from the late 20th Century, including Philip K. Dick, Hunter S Thompson and Ken Kesey.

William J. Craddock

In 2007, the family of Neal Cassady republished Craddock's February 3, 1968 column eulogizing Cassady, whom he’d met at a party thrown by Ken Kesey near San Francisco.


Andy Keen

A Ken Kesey inspired bus trip through the United States, where he met Oliver Stone in New Orleans, decided his career in film.

Cody's Books

Some prominent authors and notables who appeared at Cody's were: Tom Robbins, Norman Mailer, Ken Kesey, Alice Walker, Allen Ginsberg, Maurice Sendak, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Ali, and Salman Rushdie.

Digital Be-In

However, producer Michael Gosney also brought in key figures from the Human Be-In such as Allen Cohen, Chet Helms and Timothy Leary to maintain the 60s influence, as well as 60s icons Ken Kesey, Ram Dass and Wavy Gravy.

Encyclopaedia Psychedelica

Contributors included: Neil Oram, Charles Stephens, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Pete Loveday, Tony Benn, Charles Bukowski, Robert Bly and Richard Allen who went on to establish the neo-psychedelic Delerium Records label .

Eugene Mall

When Springfield Creamery owner Chuck Kesey, brother of author Ken Kesey, brought the Grateful Dead to the Oregon Renaissance Faire to play a benefit concert for the creamery in 1972, the Eugene Mall seemed like a good waiting room for the next concert.

I Want to Take You Higher

It opened with a day-long outdoor festival MC'd by Chet Helms that drew thousands to the Museum’s plaza, featuring Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe McDonald, and Donovan, with guests Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters (complete with the Further Bus).

Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg

The new DVD, released on July 2007 by New Yorker Video, includes interviews with Bono, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, Joan Baez, Michael McClure, Norman Mailer, Amiri Baraka, Ken Kesey, William S. Burroughs, Anne Waldman and Timothy Leary - all of whom considered Allen a good friend.

Port Townsend Writers' Conference

Noted authors who have been associated with the Port Townsend Writers' Conference over the years include Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, Alice Walker, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ken Kesey, Carolyn Forché, Belle Randall, Barry Lopez, Tom Robbins, Sam Hamill, Marvin Bell, Sherman Alexie, David Guterson, Terry Tempest Williams and Frank Herbert.

The Closing of Winterland

The Dead celebrated the closing as an approximately five hour long party (complete with breakfast with the audience at dawn) and invited some guests including guitarist John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service and Ken Kesey as well as actor Dan Aykroyd who provided the midnight countdown.

Vikram Jayanti

Since then he has directed a series of feature documentaries which his friends call his American Monsters series, about larger-than-life characters such as Ken Kesey, James Ellroy, Julian Schnabel, Garry Kasparov


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