It's electric!

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

I just finished this classic book by Tom Wolfe. It's all about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, which is the group that essentially started the psychedelic movement. It's non-fiction, but it doesn't read like, "Oh, and then on this date, such and such happened fhush boring fact." It reads more like a novel. It was kind of hard to adjust to Wolfe's style at first, because it's kind of crazy and different (he used the style to add to the description of the LSD experience), but I got used to it. Apart from just having a great title, I found this book really interesting. All the characters are really fascinating and vivid. At first, I was not so into the book. Once Wolfe went back to the beginning of the story, I became more engrossed, though there were a lot of parts I had a hard time concentrating on. My overall favorite part of the whole book was the part about this guy named Sandy.

I have a lot of respect for Wolfe for compiling this massive amount of history, and then presenting it in an interesting way. I had to keep reminding myself that it was true, especially because at times it all seemed so surreal. The thing that bothered me the most doesn't even have to do with the writing, it has to do with the cover; it specifically says several times in the book that on the front of the Pranksters' bus it said, "Furthur," spelled just like that, with two u's. However, on the cover, it was written "further." Stupid complaint, I know. I just found it irritating. Overall, though, a fascinating story. 7.5 pretzel bites.

KAY