Wolfe EKAT (2)

[Terrance]

fact, to be an art form foreseen in that strange book,
Childhood's
End, a form called `total identification'. ... This
reference is to
Arthur C. Clarke's science-fiction vision of an art form in
which all
senses would be stimulated to the point that a person could
mentally participate in any experience. Wolfe quotes from
Clarke's
description: And when the `program' was over, he would have
acquired a memory as vivid as any experience in his actual
lifeindeed, indistinguishable from reality itself. ... Wolfe
follows
this quotation with an ominously intrusive comment, Too
freaking
true! ... Sarcastic use of the Pranksters' hip phrasing
indicates the
fatal error that he believes is behind the doom toward which
Kesey's quest is moving. For Wolfe, as for the dark romantic
authors of classic American literature, the inability to
distinguish
fact from fantasy in a reverie of transcendent experience is
a
profound error leading to dissolution of the self.

At this point in the narrative, as he is about to begin the
story of
the Acid Tests, Wolfe makes clear allusions which suggest
that the
reader should view these events in the framework of a
classic
work of American literature, one dealing with a true plunge
into a
vortex, Poe's Descent into the Maelstrom. It is not
surprising that
Wolfe, with his sociologist's belief in facts and analysis
as well as
his skepticism toward the viability of a purely subjective
reality,
should use a story by one of the great dark romantics as the
metaphorical framework for the climactic chapters of his
Kesey
narrative. Poe presents A Descent into the Maelstrom as an
oral
tale once told by a fisherman to the narrator, who now
presents it
to us in the fisherman's own words. As they stand at the
edge of a
cliff above a horrifying oceanic whirlpool, the maelstrom,
the
fisherman tells his tale of having been accidentally swept
into the
swirling vortex. (pp. 11113)

Wolfe introduces this motif in his description of the third
Acid
Test. As he describes approximately 300 heads gathered on
the
floor, well into LSD trips and about to experience the
Pranksters'
projection of The Movie and a psychedelic light show upon
the
walls, Wolfe sums up the moment with the allusive
exclamation,
Into the maelstrom! ... He describes the setting as a
chaotic
ocean of experience which the Pranksters have contrived
through
audio-visual technology.... Wolfe describes the experience
of a
man sucked into the developing maelstrom of the Acid Test:

into the whirlpool who should appear but Owsley.
Owsley, done up in his $600 head costume, has
emerged from his subterrain of espionage and paranoia
to come to see the Prankster experiment for himself,
and in the middle of the giddy contagion he takes LSD.
They never saw him take it before. He takes the LSD
and RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROIL the
whirlpool picks him up and spins him down into the
stroboscopic stereoptic prankster panopticon in full
variable lag.... (p. 114)

The Acid Tests are the culmination of Kesey's attempt to
break
through to a total embrace of experience through technology
(both
the chemical LSD and the projected light show and electronic
music). But as he sees himself successfully projecting his
fantasy
experience to others, he is assuming the dangerous role of
seeing
his will as more powerful than actuality. Wolfe's perception
of the
satantic element of this role is apparent in the chapter
title,
Cosmo's Tasmanian Deviltry (a phrase he shows moving
through Kesey's thoughts as he controls the flashing
strobe-light at
the Acid Test), and in his emphasis upon Owsley's new view
of
Kesey as a demon. ... When Wolfe later recounts the Trips
Festival, which Kesey attends just before his flight to
Mexico, he
returns to the Poe allusion, describing Kesey with a
projection
machine on a balcony above the hall as up above the
maelstrom.
... At one point Kesey uses the projector to flash a message
in red
on the wall: Anybody who knows he is God go up on stage. ...
Kesey believes that he stands safely above the maelstrom, on
an
edge of perfect control. This edge, which is a metaphor
Kesey
often uses to describe the goal of the Pranksters' quest to
transcend the distinction between subjective and objective
reality,
is portrayed by Wolfe, as by Poe and Melville, as a
dangerous
position inducing a cosmic vertigo. He repeatedly emphasizes
Kesey's position as one high above the affairs of the world.
This
position provides him with the vantage point ... of an
overview of
experienceas well as with the illusion of being safely
distant from
its dangers. But that illusion inevitably leads to his
succumbing to
the danger of such a positiona fall into the whirlpool of
actual
experience below. While Kesey believes he is in control and
standing above the maelstrom, Wolfe shows that he is in fact
already caught in the whirlpool.... (pp. 11617)

Wolfe develops this pattern in a number of scenes in the
second
half of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The first portrays
Kesey's second arrest for possession of marijuana two nights
before the Trips Festival. This arrest occurs while Kesey
and
Mountain Girl are perched high above San Francisco on the
roof
of an apartment building. High both physically and mentally,
they
watch with blissful indifference as a police car pulls up
far
below.... For the reader who recalls the blinking red light
that
Kesey had felt he was praying to in his youth, the red light
which
symbolized Kesey's pursuit of technological fulfillment of
the
American Dream, Wolfe's description of Kesey watching the
police car's light repeatedly blinking red, nothing has
ominous
significance. And Wolfe's previous use of the whirlpool
image
lends an equally ominous significance to the feeling of
turning so
slow in the interferrometric synch. Indeed, Wolfe proceeds
to
show that the resulting arrest, which increases the
likelihood of a
lengthy prison sentence for Kesey, leads him after the Trips
Festival to descend geographically to the southwestern tip
of
Mexico, in a journey that is paralleled by a psychological
descent
into deeper fantasy.