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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
This is fine. Wolfe is no Kesey and also no Hunter S. Thompson.
I don't quite know why I finished this, since I found the narrative voice absurd and credulous and-- unless it was hiding behind layers of irony so dry that I couldn't detect them-- totally uncritical of a troupe of self-absorbed buffoons who don't seem aware of how hard they find it to hold to the cartoonish ideology they've laid out for themselves. Also, Wolfe has no problem going along with the misogyny of the Prankster group, which I guess was partly the way of the times, but given that many other writers at the time had the critical distance to notice how screwed up the treatment and position of women was in the counterculture (pre-feminist takeover of the Rat newspaper), I don't feel like he deserves any quarter here. The book-- "grooving on this, grokking that!" reads like ad copy (ala "The Man Can't Bust Our Music!") and believes its own hype. Grr.
Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is brilliant: as a history of a very specific era of American history, as a cultural chronicle of a very interesting group of people, The Merry Pranksters, and their philosophies, and as a zippy, erudite, trippy piece of Beat writing. Furthur!
Really interesting read if you have interest in Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, the hippy movement in general, but I wish it got more focused instead of less-so in the second half. Wolfe is a great writer and he wanted to try and capture the spirit and the substance (so to speak), the feeling of the hippies, and for large portions of the book it works- he describes what’s actually happening, then throws in some crazed text more indicative of how the feeling might have been- but for the most part actual description/explanation comes first. As it all disintegrates, however, so does the writing- as the movement grows more confused so too does the narrative- and that really might have been intentional. It’s tough to read though, and I would have preferred it just stop at a certain point with Wolfe offering more explanation as to what happened with everyone/what went wrong, etc. Even Wolfe’s own thoughts or reflections would have been appreciated- instead characters just disappear as the song continues on until it just doesn’t, anymore. Matching the mood worked through much of the book, but when the mood turned sour the crazed text just increases when I wish it had taken a step back to explain more. Still a classic, still a great read, just be prepared to skip some bad poetry and stream-of-consciousness stuff.
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I did not finish this book. This is Tom Wolfe doing a bad Kerouac impression, which read like middle-class accountant trying to be in character for a hippie Halloween costume. It might get better after page 100, but I am not invested enough to find out.
I'd been putting this book off for a while and started teaching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Kesey, so I thought that this would be the perfect time to read it. And it probably was, although I do feel that it drags a bit. Maybe I needed to take some acid to really read it?
But I did enjoy the atmosphere of the book, and how it fit with the little mini study I was doing, and I was able to call out moments for my class, so all in all it was good.
But I did enjoy the atmosphere of the book, and how it fit with the little mini study I was doing, and I was able to call out moments for my class, so all in all it was good.
This was one of those books I had heard of, but never knew exactly what it was about. (It ended up as required reading for a class on the History of San Francisco.) Turns out it's about the group of friends who started the LSD/hippie movement in the SF Bay Area in the mid-60s. The book takes you on an incredible (non-fiction) trip through some amazing stuff; things that you cannot believe they got away with. Highly recommended.