The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
LSD was never mentioned in all this. Kesey came off chiefly as a visionary who had forsaken his riches and his career as a novelist in order to explore new forms of expression. In the California press he graduated from mere literary fame to celebrity. If the purpose of the raid was to stamp out dopeniks—the cop game couldn’t have backfired more completely.
After Kesey and the Pranksters got out on bail, the legal wrangling went on interminably—but they all stayed free. Kesey had a team of aggressive, bright young lawyers working on the case, Zonker’s brother-in-law Paul Robertson in San Jose, and Pat Hallinan and Brian Rohan from San Francisco. Hallinan was the son of Vincent Hallinan, the lawyer, a famous champion of the underdog. By and by the charges were dropped against everybody but Kesey and Page Browning, and even they ended up with only one charge lodged against them, possession of marijuana. They trooped down to Redwood City, the San Mateo County Seat, fifteen times during the last eight months of 1965, by Rohan’s count. It was interminable, but they all stayed free …
Yes! And heads, kids, kooks, intellectual tourists of all sorts, started heading for Kesey’s in La Honda.
Even Sandy Lehmann-Haupt returned. About a year had gone by and he was O.K. again and he flew into San Francisco. Kesey and four or five other Pranksters drove to the San Francisco Airport to meet him. As they drove back to La Honda, Sandy cheerfully gave a brief account of what had happened to him in Big Sur before he split like he did.
“—then I started having dream wars … with somebody,” said Sandy. He didn’t want to say who.
“Yeah, I know,” said Kesey. “With me.”
He knew!
And the mysto fogs began to roll in again off the bay …
NORMAN HARTWEG AND HIS FRIEND EVAN ENGBER DROVE UP to La Honda from Los Angeles with the idea of doing the Tibetan thing for a few weeks and seeing what it was all about. That was pretty funny, the idea of doing the Tibetan thing at Kesey’s. Nevertheless, that was Norman’s idea. Norman was a 17-year-old playwright from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was a thin guy, five feet seven, with a thin face and sharp features and a beard. But his nose tilted up slightly, which gave him a boyish look. He was eking out a living by writing a column for the Los Angeles Free Press, a weekly, the L.A. counterpart of the Village Voice, and working on avant-garde films, and living in a room underneath the dance floor of a discotheque on the Sunset Strip. He had run into Kesey’s friend Susan Brustman and then into Kesey himself, and Kesey had invited him up to La Honda to edit The Movie and … partake of the life … Somehow Norman got the idea the people at Kesey’s were like, you know, monks, novitiates; a lot of meditating with your legs crossed, chanting, eating rice, feeling vibrations, walking softly over the forest floor and thinking big. Why else would they be out in the woods in the middle of nowhere?
So Norman drove up from L.A. with Evan Engber, who was a theater director, occasionally, and, later, a member of Dr. West’s Jug Band, and, as a matter of fact, the husband of Yvette Mimieux the movie actress. They drove up the coastal route, California Route 1, then cut over Route 84 at San Gregorio and on up into the redwood forests; around a bend, and they’re at Kesey’s. But jesus, somehow it doesn’t look very Tibetan. It isn’t the hanged man in the tree so much, or the statue of a guy eating it. Hell, there are no flies on the Tibetans. It is more the odd detail here and there. Kesey’s mailbox, for example, which is red, white, and blue, the Stars and Stripes. And a big framed sign on top of the house: WE WUZ FRAMED. And the front gate, across the wooden bridge. The gate is made of huge woodcutter’s saw blades and has a death mask on it—and a big sign, about 15 feet long, that reads: THE MERRY PRANKSTERS WELCOME THE HELL’S ANGELS. Music is blasting out of some speakers on top of the house, a Beatles record—Help, I ne-e-e-ed somebody—
At that moment, that very moment, Engber gets a stabbing pain in his left shoulder.
“I don’t know what it is, Norman,” he says, “but it’s killing me.
They drive on in across the bridge and get out and go into the house looking for Kesey. Brown dogs belly through the flea clouds outside the house, coughing fruit flies. Engber clutches his shoulder. Inside, bright green-and-gold light streams in through the French doors onto the damnedest clutter. There are big pipes hanging down from the rafters in the main room, a whole row of them, like some enormous vertical xylophone. Also dolls, dolls hanging from the rafters, re-assembled dolls, dolls with the heads sticking out of a hip joint, a leg out of the neck joint, arm out of other leg joint, leg out of shoulder joint, and so on, and a Day-Glo navel. Also balloons, also Chianti bottles stuck on the rafters at weird angles somehow, as if they had been in the very process of falling to the floor and suddenly they froze there. And on the floor, on the chairs, on tables, on the couch, toys, and tape recorders, and pieces of tape recorders, and pieces of pieces of tape recorders, and movie equipment, and pieces of pieces of pieces of movie equipment, and tapes and film running all over the place, plaited in among wires and sockets, all of it in great spiral tangles, great celluloid billows, and a big piece of a newspaper headline cut out and stuck up on the wall: HAIL TO ALL EDGES …
In the midst of all this, sitting toward the side, is a gangling girl, looks very Scandinavian, idling over a guitar, which she can’t play, and she looks up at Norman and says:
“We’ve all got hangups … and we’ve got to get rid of them.”
Yeah … yeah … I guess that’s right. There … on the other side here is a little figure with an enormous black beard. The little g-nome looks up at Norman. His eyes narrow and he breaks into a vast inexplicable grin, looking straight at Norman and then Engber, and then he goes scuttling out the door, snuffling and giggling to himself. Yeah … yeah … I guess that’s right, too.
“I don’t know what the hell has happened to me,” says Engber, clutching his shoulder, “but it’s getting worse.”
Norman keeps walking back through the house until he hits a bathroom. Only it is a madhouse of a bathroom. The walls, the ceilings, everything, one vast collage, lurid splashes of red and orange, lurid ads and lurid color photos from out of magazines, pieces of plastic, cloth, paper, streaks of Day-Glo paint, and from the ceiling and down one wall a wild diagonal romp of rhinoceroses, like a thousand tiny rhinoceroses chasing each other through Crazy Lurid Land. Over the top part of the mirror over the sink is a small death mask painted in Day-Glo. The mask hangs from a hinge. Norman lifts it up and underneath the mask is a typewritten message pasted on the mirror:
“Now that I’ve got your attention …”
Norman and Engber go out back and head up the path that leads into the woods, to look for Kesey. Up past screaming Day-Glo tree trunks and tents here and there and some kind of weird cave down in a gully with Day-Glo objects glowing in the mouth of it and then into deep green glades under the redwoods with the lime light filtering through—and they keep coming upon weird objects. Suddenly, a whole bed, an old-fashioned iron bedstead, a mattress, a cover, but all glowing with mad stripes and swirls of orange, red, green yellow Day-Glo. Then a crazed toy horse in a tree trunk. Then a telephone—a telephone—sitting up on a tree stump, glowing in the greeny deeps with beautiful glowing cords of many colors coming out of it. Then a TV set, only with mad Day-Glo designs painted on the screen. Then into a clearing, a flash of sunlight, and down the slope, here comes Kesey. He looks twice as big as the time Norman saw him in L.A. He has on white Levi’s and a white T-shirt. He walks very erect and his huge muscled arms swing loose. The redwoods soar all around.
Norman says, “Hello—”
But Kesey just nods slightly and smiles very faintly as if to say, You said you’d be here and here you are. Kesey looks around and then down the slope toward the tent plateaus and the house and the highway and says:
“We’re working on many levels here.”
Engber clutches his shoulder and says:
“I don’t know what this thing is, Norman, but it’s killing me. I’ve got to go back to L.A.”
“I’ll come back up when I get over it.”
Norman kind of knew he wouldn’t, and he didn’t, but Norman wanted to stick around.
ALL RIGHT, FILM EDITOR, ARTICLE WRITER, PARTICIPANT-Observer, you’re here. On with your … editing writing observing. But somehow Norman doesn’t start cutting film or writing his column. Almost immediately the strange atmosphere of the place starts rolling over him. There is an atmosphere of—how can one describe it?—we are all on to something here, or into something, but no one is going to put it into words for you. Put it into words—one trouble right away is that he finds it very hard to get into the conversations here in the house in the woods. Everyone is very friendly and most of them are outgoing. But they are all talking about—how can one describe it?—about … life, things that are happening around there, things they are doing—or about things of such an abstract and metaphorical nature that he can’t fasten them, either. Then he realizes that what it really is is that they are interested in none of the common intellectual currency that makes up the conversations of intellectuals in Hip L.A., the standard topics, books, movies, new political movements—For years he and all his friends have been talking about nothing but intellectual products, ideas, concoctions, brain candy, shadows of life, as a substitute for living; yes. They don’t even use the usual intellectual words here—mostly it is just thing.
Cassady’s thing is—christalmighty, Cassady—and it is with Cassady that he gets the first sense of the daily allegory at Kesey’s, allegorical living, every action a demonstration of a lesson of life—like Cassady’s Gestalt Driving—but that is your term … Whenever there is any driving to be done, Cassady does it. That is Cassady’s thing, or his thing on one level. They drive up the mountain, up to Skylonda, atop Cahill Ridge, for something. Coming back, down the mountain, Norman is in the back seat, two or three others are sitting front and back, and Cassady is driving. They start hauling down the mountain, faster and faster, the trees snapping by like in some kind of amusement park ride, only Cassady isn’t looking at the road. Or holding onto the wheel. His right hand is flipping the dial on the radio. One rock ‘n’ roll number blips out here—I’m nurding ut noonh erlation —then another one here on the dial—vronnnh ba-bee suckoo pon-pon—all the time Cassady is whamming out the beat on the steering wheel with the heel of his left hand and the whole car seems to be shuddering with it—and his head is turned completely around looking Norman squarely in the eye and grinning as if he is having the most congenial delightful conversation with him, only Cassady is doing all the talking, an incredible oral fibrillation of words, nutty nostalgia—“a ’46 Plymouth, you understand, gear shift like a Dairy Queen pulled up side a ’47 Chrysler jumpy little marshmallow fellow in there had a kickdown gear was gonna ossify the world, you understand”—all to Norman with the happiest smile in the world—
You crazy fool—the truck—
—at the last possible moment somehow Cassady fishtails the car back onto the inside of the curve and the truck shoots by clean black shot like a great 10-ton highballing tear drop of tar—Cassady still talking, hanging on the steering wheel, pounding and rapping away. Norman terrified; Norman looks at the others to see if—but they’re all sitting there throughout the whole maniacal ride as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened at all.
And maybe that’s it—the first onset of Ahor paranoia hits—maybe that’s it, maybe he has been sucked into some incredible trap by a bunch of dope-taking crazies who are going to toy with him, for what reason I do not—
Back at the house he decides to get into his role of Journalist Reporter Observer. At least he will be doing something and be outside, sane, detached. He starts asking about this and that, about Cassady, about Babbs, about the ineffable things, about why—
Mountain Girl explodes suddenly.
“Why! Why! Why! Why! Why! Why! Why!” she says, throwing up her hands and shaking her head, with such an air of authority and conviction that he is crushed.
Later Kesey comes in and happens to say in the course of something—“Cassady doesn’t have to think any more”—then he walks away. It is as if for some reason he is furnishing Norman with part of the puzzle.
Kesey keeps doing this kind of thing. As if by radar, Kesey materializes at the critical moment, in the cabin, out front, in the backhouse, up in the woods. The crisis may be somebody’s personal thing or some group thing—suddenly Kesey pops up like Captain Shotover in Shaw’s play Heartbreak House, delivers a line—usually something cryptic, allegorical, or merely descriptive, never a pronouncement or a judgment. Half the time he quotes the wisdom of some local sage—Page says, Cassady says, Babbs says—Babbs says, if you don’t know what the next thing is, all you have to—and just as suddenly he’s gone.
For example—well, it always seems like there’s no dissension around here, no arguments, no conflict, in spite of all these different and in some cases weird personalities ricocheting around and rapping and carrying on. Yet that is only an illusion. It is just that they don’t have it out with one another. Instead, they take it to Kesey, all of them forever waiting for Kesey, circling around him.
One kid, known as Pancho Pillow, was a ball-breaker freak. He has to break your balls by coming on obnoxious in any way he could dream up, after which you were supposed to reject him, after which he could feel hurt and blame you for … all. That was his movie. One night Pancho is in the house with a book about Oriental rugs, full of beautiful color plates, and he is rapping on and on about the beautiful rugs—
“—like, man, I mean, these cats were turned on ten centuries ago, the whole thing, they had mandalas you never dreamed of—right?—look here, man, I want to blow your mind for you, just one time—”
—and he sticks the book under some Prankster’s nose—here’s a beautiful color picture of an Isfahan rug, glowing reds and oranges and golds and starlike vibrating lines all radiating out from a medallion at the center—
“No thanks, Pancho, I already had some.”
“Come on, man! I mean, like, I gotta share this thing, I gotta make you see it, I can’t keep this whole thing to myself! Like, you know, I mean, I want to share it with you—you dig?—now you look at this one—”
And so on, shoving the goddamn book at everybody, waiting for somebody to tell him to go fuck himself, at which point he can stalk out, fulfilled.
Feed the hungry bee—but christ, this ball breaker is too much. So now all the Pranksters endure, waiting for one thing, waiting for Kesey to turn up. By and by the door opens and it’s Kesey.
“Hey man!” Pancho says and rushes up to him. “You gotta look at these things I found! I gotta turn you on to this, man! I mean, I really got to, because it will fucking blow your mind!” and he sticks the book in Kesey’s face.
Kesey just looks down at the picture of the Isfahan or the Shiraz or the Bakhtiari or whatever it is, as if he is studying it. And then he says, softly, in the Oregon drawl,
“Why should I take your bad trip?”
—without looking up, as if what he is saying has something to do with this diamond medallion here or this border of turtles and palms—
“Bad trip!” Pancho screams. “What do you mean, bad trip!” and he throws the book to the floor, but Kesey is already off into the back of the house. And Pancho knows his whole thing is, in fact, not sharing beauty rugs at all, but simply his bad trip, and they all know that’s what it’s all about, and he knows they know it, and the whole game is over and so long, Pancho Pillow.
AND YET IT BEGAN TO SEEM TO NORMAN THAT EVEN PANCHO was further into the group thing than he was. He felt useless. He never got to edit the movie. Kesey and Babbs would just say do some cutting. But he wanted to see the whole film first, a whole run-through, so he could see where it was going. It was the same with the group. He wanted to run the whole group back through his personal editing machine and see what the whole picture looked like and what the goal was. All the while it seemed like they
“Every time you read a book or smoke a cigarette,” he yells, “you’re hitting me. Look at Pancho. Pancho’s working. Pancho is writing poetry all the time, and every day he brings me a poem—”
—which is ridiculous, Pancho’s poems are so bad. In fact, it is so ridiculous Bradley breaks into a smile over it. Nevertheless, the point has been made. Which is that Norman is lazy, “personal.” Reading is something that just gives pleasure to the reader. It is not for the group. Also smoking—a thing that begets nothing but itself. So he is telling Norman that he is lazy and not contributing. Which is true. He is right. But he wants to start a fight over it or something. This amuses Norman and he laughs at Bradley—Bradley—and yet even though it is only Bradley, it seems like an indication of how the rest feel. Otherwise Bradley probably never would have said anything. Norman becomes quieter and quieter, like a clam. And it seemed as if they laughed at him—
“Not at you—with you,” Kesey kept telling him, trying to josh him out of all his hangups and inferiorities.
But the only thing that really helped was having Paul Foster turn up.