Kesey

[Steelhead]

Cal McInvale puts Steelhead in his place:

>So now one has to have lived in Oregon in order to appreciate literature?
>Sounds kind of like the Pauline "saved by grace" theology -- you've got to
>experience this mystical thing to really understand God. Next you'll be
>telling us that unless we've dropped acid, then we don't really understand
>Pynchon.

>I've never heard any reliable criticism that says Notion is better that
>Cuckoo's Nest. I even recall Kesey once saying that while Notion was still
>closest to his heart (what first novel isn't to the writer?), Cuckoo's Nest
>was his best. Even the dullest freshman lit teacher knows this -- that's
>why they teach it instead of Notion.

>Why don't you bop on down the road and ask Kesey, since you guys are so
>damn tight? And lay off Bonnie's case, wouldya?


Hey, Cal you're a first rate Kesey scholar, for sure...I especially liked
your theory regarding Kesey's soft spot (or blind spot?) for Notion,
because it was his first book and all.  And, as you suggested, "what first
novel isn't to the writer?"

Just one problem with that piercing line of inquiry, Cal:  He wrote
Cuckoo's Nest (1962) first.  Damn. Thought you had a whole new genre of lit
crit goin' there. There's a solution though--just _lie_ about it.
Baudrillard do and Harold Bloom do it. Most literary scholars, and
freshman, won't know the difference.

Frankly, I don't read much criticism myself. I know I should. I feel deeply
impoverished intellectually without it.  And, no doubt, the interpretive
theories of, how did you put it, "even the dullest freshman lit teacher"
would be a salutory corrective for my misguided readings of horribly
received books like Notion (1964).

Don't get me wrong. I don't want you or anyone else moving into Oregon.
We're horrible xenophobes here. A-and we all carry guns-concealed ones.
Including Kesey and Babs. I don't care if you like or dislike Notion--one
bit. I just observed that spending time in Oregon, particularly in the
Coast Range, opens a whole new perspective on Kesey's achievement--he
captured the feel of the land and its people in an astounding way...this
is, of course, not to say that Kesey of all writers is into Mimetics
(though I bet he has read Erich Auerbach--have you?) But are you really
saying that living in the South doesn't add a new depth to Faulkner or
O'Connor? Or that having some familiarity with the culture, politics, and
ecology of Northern California doesn't add an extra dimension to Vineland?
That poststructualist notions of Hyperreality and the verbose blather of
literary critics are to be the sole arbiters of "good" literature? To quote
Bonnie:  Urgh!

I never said Notion was better (whatever that means) than Cuckoos Nest.
They are totally different books.  Although Cuckoo, also has deep PNW
roots-an especially important enthymeme there is is the damning of the
Columbia and the death of the Dalles Indians salmon fishing ground. You
dismissed Notion (on the most specious of grounds--the opinion (flailed or
not) of literary critics and professors of literature). I never dismissed
the importance of Cuckoo or Kesey's Garage Sale or Demon Box or Sailor
Song.  The more Kesey the better as far as I'm concerned.

And I'm glad to see the Art of Chivalry hasn't expired--I thought Andrea
Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon had killed it off long ago.

By the way. We put Kesey up the last time he did a reading here in
Stumptown for his wonderful new book _Last Go Round_ about the Pendleton
Rodeo. Kesey said then that he'd never top the feeling he had after
completing Notion.  For what that's worth, which, admittedly, isn't very
much.

Steely