The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Tom Wolfe's THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST is one of the most essential works on the 1960s counterculture, revolutionizing the way the reporters wrote about the world. This seminal work of the New Journalism, a style which explored the writer's own experience of the journey rather than merely reporting the bare facts, was written in a mind-bending barrage of words perfectly suited to the adventures of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they launched out on the "Transcontinental Bus Tour." Starting on the West Coast in 1964, Kesey and the Pranksters, a group of friends and hangers-on, set out in a converted school bus driven by Neal Cassady, heading for New York, where Kesey's book SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION was due to be published. Along the way, they introduced acid (then legal) to hundreds of like-minded folks and staged impromptu jam sessions with the Warlocks (who later became the Grateful Dead). They stayed one step ahead of the law as they made their way across the country, with Kesey wanted for marijuana possession by numerous agencies, including the FBI. They also met some of the most revolutionary figures of the day, including Dr. Timothy Leary, Terry Southern, and Allen Ginsberg. Wolfe's style, word usage, and vivid descriptions of these events have introduced much of the vocabulary of the Sixties into popular culture and entered the public consciousness to such a degree that THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST has become, for many people, the final word on the era.