WOLFE, Tom
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1968
8vo., cream cloth, backtrip lettered and decorated in red and blue; upper edge stained green, else untrimmed; together in the iconic, vibrantly-printed dustwrapper featuring a design by Milton Glaser; with a black and white photograph of the author by Jacques Lowe to the lower panel; pp. [ix], 2-434, [vi]; boards with a couple of smudge marks and lightly bumped at spine tips; small water splash mark to the upper edge; the odd finger mark, spot, or erased pencil markings to the interior, but otherwise an excellent example; in the very good dustwrapper which retains much of its original brightness, just a little creased and nicked at extremities, particularly to spine tips; the odd scratch. A very good to near-fine example.
First book club edition, though with clipped dustwrapper and therefore near-identical to the true first. This copy signed by Ken Kesey (as ‘Tommie Wolfie Kesey’), Faye Kesey, Sonny Barger (Oakland Chapter, Hell's Angels), and Merry Pranksters: George Walker, Ed McClanahan, Mountain Girl, Ken Babbs, ( as ‘Ken Wolfe Boy Babbs’), Anonymous (Linda Breen) and Mike Hagen. A previous owner has loosely inserted a list of names alongside their pseudonyms, and an obituary of Sonny Barger, ‘Who Turned the Hells Angels Into Rebels’, printed in the New York Times on July 1st 2022.
Ken Kesey was born into a ‘promising middle-class’ family (dustwrapper), and was a high school wrestler and novelist when he eloped, in 1956, with his childhood sweetheart Norma "Faye" Haxby (whose signature appears in this volume). It was while he was studying at Stanford University that he began to develop lifelong friendships with Ken Babbs and Ed McClanahan (who have also signed this example), and several others who would eventually become part of his mystic brotherhood, the ‘Merry Pranksters’.
Kesey’s life changed dramatically shortly after, while he was working at Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital as a night aide. There, he was tricked into enrolling in a CIA-funded study called Project MKULTRA, a highly secretive military programme which aimed to analyse the effects of psychedelic drugs including LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT. It was the influences of these drugs, and the hospital setting, which inspired his best-selling novel ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, subsequently published in 1962 to great commercial success. The resulting fame led to him purchasing a log cabin in California, where he held an increasing number of LSD-fuelled parties for an ever-growing circle of friends and followers, ‘The Merry Pranksters’, as well as hosting regular performances by The Grateful Dead.
In the 1960s, Tom Wolfe first began to attend these parties. Pioneering for his use of ‘New Journalism’ (which incorporated literary techniques), Wolfe here presents a firsthand (and sober) account of these events, which include the group’s drug-fuelled romp across the USA in a ‘psychedelic’ bus named Furthur, and Kesey’s subsequent exile to Mexico as a fugitive from the FBI, the California Police and the Mexican Federales. Through these events, Kesey became a figurehead of the countercultural movement in America, which bridged the gap between the beat movement to the hippy generation.
A unique example, signed by Kesey, his wife, his lover ‘Mountain Girl’ (with whom he fathered a child), and several others.
WOLFE, Tom
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1968
8vo., cream cloth, backtrip lettered and decorated in red and blue; upper edge stained green, else untrimmed; together in the iconic, vibrantly-printed dustwrapper featuring a design by Milton Glaser; with a black and white photograph of the author by Jacques Lowe to the lower panel; pp. [ix], 2-434, [vi]; boards with a couple of smudge marks and lightly bumped at spine tips; small water splash mark to the upper edge; the odd finger mark, spot, or erased pencil markings to the interior, but otherwise an excellent example; in the very good dustwrapper which retains much of its original brightness, just a little creased and nicked at extremities, particularly to spine tips; the odd scratch. A very good to near-fine example.
First book club edition, though with clipped dustwrapper and therefore near-identical to the true first. This copy signed by Ken Kesey (as ‘Tommie Wolfie Kesey’), Faye Kesey, Sonny Barger (Oakland Chapter, Hell's Angels), and Merry Pranksters: George Walker, Ed McClanahan, Mountain Girl, Ken Babbs, ( as ‘Ken Wolfe Boy Babbs’), Anonymous (Linda Breen) and Mike Hagen. A previous owner has loosely inserted a list of names alongside their pseudonyms, and an obituary of Sonny Barger, ‘Who Turned the Hells Angels Into Rebels’, printed in the New York Times on July 1st 2022.
Ken Kesey was born into a ‘promising middle-class’ family (dustwrapper), and was a high school wrestler and novelist when he eloped, in 1956, with his childhood sweetheart Norma "Faye" Haxby (whose signature appears in this volume). It was while he was studying at Stanford University that he began to develop lifelong friendships with Ken Babbs and Ed McClanahan (who have also signed this example), and several others who would eventually become part of his mystic brotherhood, the ‘Merry Pranksters’.
Kesey’s life changed dramatically shortly after, while he was working at Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital as a night aide. There, he was tricked into enrolling in a CIA-funded study called Project MKULTRA, a highly secretive military programme which aimed to analyse the effects of psychedelic drugs including LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT. It was the influences of these drugs, and the hospital setting, which inspired his best-selling novel ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, subsequently published in 1962 to great commercial success. The resulting fame led to him purchasing a log cabin in California, where he held an increasing number of LSD-fuelled parties for an ever-growing circle of friends and followers, ‘The Merry Pranksters’, as well as hosting regular performances by The Grateful Dead.
In the 1960s, Tom Wolfe first began to attend these parties. Pioneering for his use of ‘New Journalism’ (which incorporated literary techniques), Wolfe here presents a firsthand (and sober) account of these events, which include the group’s drug-fuelled romp across the USA in a ‘psychedelic’ bus named Furthur, and Kesey’s subsequent exile to Mexico as a fugitive from the FBI, the California Police and the Mexican Federales. Through these events, Kesey became a figurehead of the countercultural movement in America, which bridged the gap between the beat movement to the hippy generation.
A unique example, signed by Kesey, his wife, his lover ‘Mountain Girl’ (with whom he fathered a child), and several others.
