Rating: 
Summary: My favorite Tom Wolfe
Review: The best book I've ever read about the 60s and the psycheedelic movement. As with all Wolfe nonfiction, this is true new journalism written with all the tools and powers of fiction. Incredible, insightful, funny and entertaining book about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.
Rating:
Summary: A definition of the 60's
Review: The dandy and brilliant Tom Wolfe managed to understand what Kesey and his friends were up to and writes about it here in an exhausting style that conveys a mood as little other writing does. If you're interested in the 60's, here it is. It's easy to get carried away with this book and see it all as lost wonderland, but Wolfe gives us enough information to peek at the cult elements of the Pranksters and how Kesey encouraged that. It's amazing that Wolfe kept his own judgments and reactions out of the writing as well as he did. The book is thoroughly researched, although now that footage from the film taken by the Pranksters themselves is finally publicly available, certain inaccuraties--and possibilities for different interpretations--are evident. This isn't to fault the book; Wolfe did a remarkable job. Interactions with the Hells Angels are particularly interesting since one can read about those same episodes from more of an Angel perspective in Hunter Thompson's work. Some day, maybe the Kesey family will relent and donate the bus to the Smithsonian rather than continuing to let it rot in Oregon, but regardless of what happens to the bus Wolfe has perserved the early 60's with remarkable capacity.
Rating: 
Summary: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Review: Necessary reading to understand the United States of the 1960's, and especially its' counterculture. Wolfe approaches from the view of the neutral journalist, giving the book that much more authenticity. Presented here is the Haight Ashbury of San Francisco; Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters; The Warlocks(later the GD); Timothy Leary and the League for Spiritual Discovery; Neal Cassady; Jack Kerouac; Allen Ginsberg; Hunter S. Thompson; etc....
Rating:
Summary: A Timeless Book - One to be Kept
Review: This is an excellent work by T.W. about Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Wolfe's writing makes you feel you are right there, observing an important & fun time in the sixties. I read this before Kesey's passing. He was a powerful figure and a great writer as well. I will always keep this as a time capsule of the California sub-culture in that turbulent and very experimental time. Also, the book is filled with colorful characters and is funny as heck. These people really lived life to the brink and this great work takes you along for the ride!
Rating:
Summary: A great glimpse into a magical time and place
Review: Let's face it: the Sixties, for better or worse, had a tremendous impact on American culture. Most of it, fortunately, has been good. A large part of Sixties culture was born in and around the San Francisco Bay Area and spread, like ripple on a pond, across the nation and beyond. Wolfe's "New Journalism" coverage of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters drew me in 30-plus years ago and, having re-read the book for the umpteenth time not long ago, it helped remind me how life is too short to be taken too seriously. Sadly, we lost Ken last year, but his spirit lives on in this delightful snapshot of a special time and place. Anyone who reads this will want to read the unofficial but necessary counter-balances that put this book in perspective: Kerouac's "On the Road" and Kesey's own "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." And, since a little band called the Warlocks got plucked from playing a pizza parlor and became the house band for the Acid Tests detailed in this book, and that band is mentioned in the book (see Grateful Dead, duh...), it helps to have some Dead music playing in the background to give this great book some atmosphere. The first time I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test I read it non-stop. It drew me in and in the process changed my perspective on life, and forever changed the direction of my life. If you want to know why Haight-Ashbury was just so damn special, this is a good place to begin.
Highly, highly recommended for anyone interested in Sixties culture.
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Summary: Beautiful Because It's True
Review: Tom Wolfe is beautiful. This book is beautiful. Kesey and the Pranksters were beautiful. They let it all go. They almost succeeded, too, but they were defeated by the most powerful enemy of all: time. Read this to learn about the 60s. Read this to learn about LSD. Read this to learn a powerful system of grassroots psychology. Read this to witness what could be the birth of the world's greatest religion. The Federal robots ate their holy communion before it could spread. And yet it's still spreading. America, eat your heart out from within and be free. This book is beautiful and it gives me hope. If it weren't for pranksters, the guns and bombs and corporations and drugs and pollution and all the "problems" would just eat us alive. Viva the unkown! Viva the Test! Viva mankind! Viva! Shop as usual, and avoid panic buying.
Rating:
Summary: Kesey tribute
Review: If you are interested in the 60s culture on the extreme end, read this ook. It is a well written book about Kesey and his bunch of crazy hippies tripping there way through society. After reading this read 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest'
Rating:
Summary: Extinction - lost time?
Review: .
Extinction - lost time: This may be a good thing. Ken Kesey's recent death marked a time passage. As an appreciation, I picked-up "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". Tom Wolfe wrote for the here and now of that was then.
Let me expand: You will really enjoy this book if you were post-beat aware. In 2002, it is historical.
In 2002, it is difficult reading.
It may trigger déjà-vu flashbacks --may they be soft.
I enjoyed Prankster revelations still apropos in 2002. You may not make it past the first thirty pages. But that's ok; it might not be in your movie. "When you've got something like we've got, you can't just sit on it...you've got to move off of it and give it to other people. It only works if you bring other people into it"....Kesey
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Summary: The Original Magic Bus
Review: This book is a must read for those of you
who ever wondered where the hippie movement
of the 60's in the Haight got its start. As
excellently chronicled by a young Tom Wolfe,
the beats of the 50's planted the seeds of what
was to become the psychedelic movement. The
thing I like about the beats was that they were
a bunch of intelligentia who made no bones about
the fact that they totally rejected the Eisenhower
50's mentality which held America under siege.
Wolfe does a fine job of emphasizing the theatrics
of the Merry Pranksters. These were more than
a bunch of druged out drifters, these were people
on a mission to spread awareness: to help awaken America
from it's post war slumber. "Go with the flow": now
there's a motto to live by!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant reporting and stunning writing!
Review: Regardless of one's ultimate attitudes about the permissive atmosphere that prevailed during the Pandora's Box that became the 1960's, Thomas Wolfe's detailed, passionate and fascinating portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters makes for required reading. Whether for ill or well, Kesey and the Pranksters are responsible for creating much of what the popular masses call "The 60's". While reading this book, that mere (and ironic) fact becomes ever so clear. When I recently visited Kesey at his ranch in Oregon, I asked him if Wolfe "got it right". Kesey's response? "Yes he did. But understand that he (Wolfe) gives a real East Coast version of what was essentially a West Coast phenomenon." What I think that means essentialy validates many of the other positive reviews of this book: Wolfe uncannily possesses the ability to be "in the Pranster's world, but not of it". This means that while Wolfe is fully willing and able to passionately incorperate the unique linguistic acrobatics of Kesey and the Pranksters in relating the narrative, he maintains somehow a cool, objective distance from all the proceedings. Kesey might be saying that while Wolfe was certainly "on the bus", he was never "ON THE BUS!". This distance is communicated and maintained by Wolfe's refusal to judge the shennanigans. He never really says "yay" or "nay" to the invention of the "counter culture" (whatever in the hell that means). He relates the consequences both natural and man-made that befalls on such behavior, but never comes out from behind the page and says "booh!" He wisely leaves all moral judgement in the place where it rightly belongs: in the hearts and minds of the readers. It is not a book for the weak of back, heart or mind. It will challenge the reader as well as entertain for Wolfe pulls no punches and that is a treatment most appropriate for the Hemingway-esque machismo frat boy jock mentality that underlies all of Kesey's art. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a excellent example of brilliant reporting. It combines stunning writing with cool logic and impassioned empathetic distance. This is a must read.
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