Kesey's kitsch a window to the past

In 1967, shortly before he moved to a farm in Pleasant Hill, the already famous Ken Kesey served a six-month jail sentence in California for possession of marijuana. Kesey had previously guaranteed his place in literary history by writing two novels, "Sometimes a Great Notion" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Then he moved on from literature to life-as-performance art, painting a bus in Day-Glo colors, naming it "Further" and driving it cross-country with an assortment of Merry Pranksters chronicled in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."

And he got busted for pot. Kesey passed his jail time making drawings and keeping a handwritten journal. Some of these memoirs managed to sneak out of jail, and over the next decades, Kesey collaged the raw material into large, rough pages, appending a title you're not ever likely to read in a daily newspaper. With the blander title of "Kesey's Jail Journal," a photographic reproduction of his meandering work was published last year (Penguin, $34.95). Now you can see the jail journal originals on display at Maude Kerns Art Center in Eugene along with an assortment of other Kesey memorabilia.

Let's make one thing clear: If Kesey hadn't written the novels, no one would care about this stuff. Without the name Kesey attached, the jail journal is mid-level '60s kitsch at best, incoherent and self-absorbed rambling at worst. Graphically, we're not talking R. Crumb here, and the writing is about as good as you might find in a prison journal by any other stoned 20-something graduate of the Stanford creative writing program. To wit:

Grainger is behind the counter, surrounded by cartons of cigarettes and candy. He's tall, alert and ornery looking. Mean-talking but there's a humor under the growl. Old big-hearted sarge. "So you're Kesey." Glowers. He has a few opinions on current trends in the younger generation and don't care if those opinions show. I tell him, yeah. I'm Kesey, and give him a big friendly grin. ...

That said, Kesey did write the novels, at least one of which - and critics disagree on which one - is a true American classic.

This Maude Kerns show has the same interest as any celebrity memorabilia collection. Imagine a museum show of formal gowns once worn by Jackie O. or the actual Bonnie & Clyde death car, complete with autopsy photos. These pages by the young and angry Kesey are artifacts of a time and place, a window to the American past, touching on authority, racism and drug use with wry humor. The down side can be a certain crassness, and this show trails off into selling $15 made-in-China toy buses painted to look like the Merry Prankster's Further and dubbed "A Little Further."

The exhibit includes various sketches Kesey made - among the best are from a 1977 trip to Egypt - and printed psychedelic posters of the era. It has the Thunder Machine that Kesey used for stage performances and such odd items as an old, much decorated acoustic guitar. It also has Vanity Fair-style photos of Kesey by Eugene photographer Brian Lanker.

When he died in 2001, Kesey left behind a vexing question: Why did he quit writing big novels? Some cynics thought he lost his grip by taking too much LSD. A kinder explanation might be that, having hit two home runs early in his career, he no longer felt the compulsion to do the hard work that large novels require.

The Maude Kerns show doesn't address that issue, but it does capture some of the manic energy that infused Kesey's work, not only the novels but the years of whimsical music and performing and Buffalo Bill theatricality that followed.

Kesey fans should love it.

May 30, 2004