One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

As a young man, Ken Kesey worked as an orderly in a psychiatric ward and participated in CIA-funded hallucinogen studies conducted in the hospital. Looking out at the patients and nurses, he wondered what separated them.

What emerged from those experiences is the mesmeric narrator of his first book: the giant, Chief, sees the world through a terrifying poetic lens. Observant and cunning, he perceives all the forces of authority and conformity as a single machine he calls “The Combine.”

Kesey’s novel is a fable about the power of the individual to oppose any coercive larger force, even if victory… show more.

Kesey’s great American novel shares with Frederick Wiseman’s first and most controversial film, Titicut Follies, a view of the nation as a mental institution.

Like Wiseman’s films, the novel resonates with American mythology, from the falsely mute Native American narrator, chief Bromden, to the boisterous protagonist, Randall Patrick McMurphy, who sports underwear with images of whales on it.

In the book, Chief Bromden refers to “The Combine” as a combination of the military-industrial complex and dominant ideology, the same phrase the governor of the Canal Zone uses to describe the political and economic control of Zonian life in Wiseman's… show more.

This novel is about a criminal who is sent to a mental institution because he pretended to be insane in order to avoid going to prison.

The book, beautifully written and loved by many, aims to show the conditions at some state hospitals at the time it was written. The malignant Nurse Ratched personifies these conditions. The psychiatrist, in contrast, is caring and empathic and actually tries to help his patients.

An excellent movie by the same name is based on this novel. I like the fact that the psychiatrist in the film is played by the real-life psychiatrist who… show more.

Possibly the 20th century’s most famous book about involuntary commitment, it’s remarkable—and profoundly disturbing—how well Ken Kesey’s masterpiece has stood the test of time.

Kesey was working in a psychiatric hospital as he wrote it, and portrays all-too-vividly the twisted relationships of power, climate of fear, daily routines of institutionalization, insipid group “therapy,” often debilitating medical treatments, and sudden bouts of violence from both sides. Most institutions are simply smaller now.

Readers today might question a white man writing through the eyes of a mute “half-Indian”—but it situates front and center stingingly timely examinations of racism, ableism, and sanism… show more.

Yikes! Kesey wrote this the year I was born and published it a few years later, and its scenes haunt me still. Need a lesson in character development? This novel has it all: the wretched head nurse of the mental institution, Nurse Ratched, the stuttering Billy Bibbit (such a cruel name!), the “Chief,” who narrates and holds secrets, and among many others, our villain, Randle McMurphy, who inspired me to cheer for his acts of defiance while I cringed from the consequences. 

This novel about authority, control, brutal manipulation, and railing against it all will challenge all notions of a… show more.

Ken Kesey was a student of Wallace Stegner, and Stegner did not think much of Kesey, who went on to write this classic within the stream of consciousness fiction movement. My own writing has been influenced by Wallace Stegner, and I can understand why he was not a fan of stream of consciousness fiction. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is written in the present tense, and this pioneering novel does as much as anything I can think of in convincingly blurring the lines between what we consider to be insanity and what is normal. Jack Nicholson starred in the… show more.

Did you ever defy unfair rules imposed on you by a boss, teacher, or parent and have to pay dearly for your rebelliousness? If so, you’re sure to identify with the main character of Kesey’s first novel, petty criminal Randle McMurphy, who’s serving a prison term for assault. In order to win a transfer to a psychiatric hospital and receive more lenient treatment, he fakes insanity. Once there, however, his defiant antics, zest for life, and sexual allure put him in conflict with the puritanical head of his ward, Nurse Ratched, who comes to see him as a disruptive misfit… show more.

Ken Kesey uses conflict and action to create a dramatically sequenced series of events about unique, interesting characters. Readers are often surprised at how much they really care about these nutty souls. This was Kesey’s only success and grew from a peculiar personal history. It is worthy of study for the value of an innovative, if not bizarre, storyline so well told that it has become an inseparable part of American culture. 

If you thought the hippies were flimsy thinkers, this 1962 novel by the leader of the Merry Pranksters – see above – will set you right. The tragic tale of a cheeky conman who takes on the regime of a psychiatric hospital and loses, it is narrated by a fellow-inmate, a Native American, and can be read as an allegory of how the System crushes the individual. But it’s much, much more than that. Kesey’s characters, and the emotions they stir, linger in the mind like a chemical cosh.