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Title: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
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Manufacturer: Bantam
List Price: $17.00
Our Price: $29.97
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| The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Bantam On The Road (part two) |
!!Freeeeeeaky!! (Almost)::::dated
So, Tom Wolfe tries to describe the Hip-Acid-Flower-Love groove. It is effective--SOMEWHAT--though his book blots up extra words and bloats up too many pages ("There is too much distance between the covers of this book.")
Kerouac was accused of typing--instead of writing--in creation of "On The Road". And since this is but a sequel to "On the Road". . .(Neal Cassady is really in this book!). . . Wolfe is guilty of. . .too much typing {[(and too much TyPeSeTTing here)]}. . .but he does write, too. . .effectively enough so I, think, I don't need to try LSD. Effectively enough, so I become nostolgic, at times, for that time of Haight-Ashbury, for that time of innocent experimentation, for that time of "braless breasts jiggling and cupcake bottoms wiggling" (that's Wolfe!). . .
. . .but enough after 200ish pages; I want to be out of Wonderland. . .out of the pudding. . .off the bus. . . |
| The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Bantam Very good...not great. |
| Very interesting account of the birth of the Hippie Movement in America (if not the world). When Wolfe's words are flowing it's awesome. But his jumbling up of styles, though intended to reflect what he was experiencing, more often than not, is boring and a bit pretentious. Specifically, when he attempts Kerouacian spontaneous prose, it largely comes off, for me anyways, as gimmicky. I wish he would have to stuck to a straight ahead style...I think the craziness and uniqueness of what he was witnessing would have still come through. Overall, though, worth the time spent reading it. |
| The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Bantam Counterculture history in a page-turner! |
I loved this one.
I normally write long and detailed reviews (see my listmania lists) but, suffice it to say that almost anyone would much enjoy reading this well-organized and closely-documented lunacy.
My highest recommendation! *.* |
| The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Bantam best book ever |
| I read this book in college (as an assignment for history class) and it literally changed my life. I've read it three more times since then. It's the only book I have ever read more than once.It's interesting and thought provoking. And it's true. 'Nuff said. |
| The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Bantam Thought-provoking and amazingly well written |
| Wolfe masterfully examines the life and times of Kesey's "merry pranksters" by offering first hand experience in detail that I haven't read before. The scenes are vivid and made me really better understand this segment of a generation that I haven't been exposed to. |
| The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Bantam Product Description |
| Tom Wolfe's much-discussed kaleidoscopic non-fiction novel chronicles the tale of novelist Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters. In the 1960s, Kesey led a group of psychedelic sympathizers around the country in a painted bus, presiding over LSD-induced "acid tests" all along the way. Long considered one of the greatest books about the history of the hippies, Wolfe's ability to research like a reporter and simultaneously evoke the hallucinogenic indulgence of the era ensures that this book, written in 1967, will live long in the counter-culture canon of American literature. |
| The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Bantam Amazon.com |
| They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. By taking On the Road's hero Neal Cassady as his driver on the cross-country revival tour and drawing on his own training as a magician, Kesey made Further into a bully pulpit, and linked the beat epoch with hippiedom. Paul McCartney's Many Years from Now cites Kesey as a key influence on his trippy Magical Mystery Tour film. Kesey temporarily renounced his literary magic for the cause of "tootling the multitudes"--making a spectacle of himself--and Prankster Robert Stone had to flee Kesey's wild party to get his life's work done. But in those years, Kesey's life was his work, and Wolfe infinitely multiplied the multitudes who got tootled by writing this major literary-journalistic monument to a resonant pop-culture moment. Kesey's theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test" soirees that launched The Grateful Dead required Wolfe's Day-Glo prose account to endure (though Kesey's own musings in Demon Box are no slouch either). Even now, Wolfe's book gives what Wolfe clearly got from Kesey: a contact high. --Tim Appelo |
