"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" Book Discussion

Self | September 9, 2002

[PJ-Comix]

OK, let this be the official thread for the book discussion of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

[weegee]

That encapsulates a lot of the leftists' strategy with concerts. Co-opt a crowd or persona and use it to push forth the leftist agenda.

Abbie Hoffman and the Black Panthers hit up the financial backers of the original Woodstock festival. They demanded free booth space for their causes and $10,000 cash. They threatened to disrupt the event if their demands weren't met.

[weegee]

When I read the book (about 4 years ago), I wondered how the sixties might have changed if Ken Kesey hadn't been in exile (fugitive from a marijuana charge). The hippie scene came up largely in his absence.

[SamAdams76]

The Merry Pranksters Welcome The Beatles

Wouldn't it have been something if The Beatles actually showed up!

Anyway I must sign off this discussion for a while to see my beloved Super Bowl Champion Patriots take on the Steelers. If the game gets over before midnight, I'll check back in for a bit, otherwise I'll revive the discussion tomorrow night with some favorite passages from the book.

[copycat]

Bump. I read this book over 20 years ago, and don't remember it that well. Too many brain cells have gone gently into that good night...

[weegee]

You can see footage of the "Acid Test Graduation" in the movie, The Hippie Revolt (it is now on DVD):

[weegee]

This was Tom Wolfe's first book on one subject, correct?

The other early ones I have are collections of essays/articles.

[foolscap]

What will be the next book the group is doing?

[sushiman]

" Abbie Hoffman and the Black Panthers hit up the financial backers of the original Woodstock festival. They demanded free booth space for their causes and $10,000 cash. They threatened to disrupt the event if their demands weren't met."

I was at Woodstock ( junior in HS ) , and Hoffman did try to disrupt the festival during The Who's performance . He ran up onto the stage planning to spew his garbage thru Pete Townshend's mike was promptly booted off the stage by Pete himself . Abbie was lucky he didn't get the guitar ( later smashed on the stage ) over his thick head !

[PJ-Comix]

What will be the next book the group is doing?

Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell. For October 14.

[SupplySider]

I thought the Pranksters and that book had a huge subversive effect on the culture. Leary, Huxley, and the other academically oriented LSD pioneers were on a serious, if flawed, philosophical quest. In the beginning, at least, they realized many of the dangers and tried to control their experiments.

The Pranksters attempted to live the inner visions in outer life, breaking all the rules as the drug would break all the inner rules. When that approach spread, we saw countless thousands of youthful drug-addled libertines and are still seeing them.

[fnord]

You say 'subversive' like it's a bad word :-)

I will have to re-read the book. I remember that it caught the flavor of those times, a small snapshot of the days when most of a generation could delay adulthood. A period not ever to be recaptured, sad to say.

[shetlan]

I enjoyed reading Tom Wolfe's amazing book about Kesey and the Pranksters.

The "Pranksters" IMO were a bunch of lost souls sharing the LSD (ie: heavy psychological mind altering drug) "experience."

[weegee]

What I got from Leary's autobiography was that he was looking to get stoned. At the military academy he got busted for illegal possession of alcohol, later he was wanted for marijuana. Eventually he tried heroin, ketamine, esctacy, hashish, and other drugs to note their effects (long after LSD and mushrooms). As to heroin, it didn't sound like a one time deal.

He may have originally been on a quest, but as he was loosened up from his Harvard stuffiness, he opened to all kinds of experiences and was seduced into hedonism.

He was (at least initially) against the Merry Prankster's form of acid ingestion (unrestrained quantities in a warehouse party with lots of strangers). The original posters even asked "Can you pass the acid test?".

I seem to recall reading that Cassady was running around with a gallon jug of electric kool aid.

It was almost classism that the cultural elite and trust fund kids could take it with Leary but not the masses. Leary alleged that even JFK consumed LSD with one of his followers. The last thing I recall hearing about him before his final year was getting busted for smoking a (tobacco) cigarette at the Austin airport.

He froze his head cryogenically (and the procedure was recorded for the film Timothy Leary's Dead). Even still, I don't think we'll be seeing him again.

[discostu]

La Honda is a pretty secluded town, Neil Young lives there now. You can probably do a lot of whacky stuff there and not get busted, most of the houses can't see each other. You also have to remember that a lot of the drugs the Pranksters were doing weren't illegal yet so they could pretty much only get busted if they left private property and became a "public nuisance". As with so many things it's really all about the neighbors and the neighborhood.

[weegee]

One man, Bart Huges (unconnected to the Merry Pranksters) but active with the 1960s LSD "conciousness" later turned to trapanation (drilling a hole in the skull to increase blood flow to the brain).

Just as the Pranksters sought to operate "normally" while under the effect of LSD (working the sound board controls, etc. at the Acid Tests), some of the followers of trepanation make attempts to read complex texts while their thinking processes are altered (I recall someone in EKAAT saying that reading a book was an "isolating" experience though, so the Pranksters seemed to frown on such activity in the group setting). The Merry Prankster's use did not seem to be purely for the feel good effects. Its usage on the bus was somewhat regulated, a woman who was sneaking doses lost sense of herself and all decorum and was sent back home; the video I've seen shows her at MacMurtray's home (although the footage of her attempting to breast feed one of his kids was not recorded, the camera operator felt embarassed to capture that moment) as well as her losing it at the Houston zoo (doing handstands and the like).

[weegee]

It wasn't that long afterwards that the Beatles were taking LSD in England (provided by a dentist, I believe).

[PJ-Comix]

I thought the Pranksters and that book had a huge subversive effect on the culture.

But on the plus sinde, the counterculture did spell the end of those horrible looking crewcuts (although they are now making a comeback again).

[PJ-Comix]

G. Gordon Liddy (pre-Watergate) once busted Timothy Leary.

[PJ-Comix]

Where can the video of the Bus Trip be obtained? This actually sounds like something that the History Channel might be interested in.

[Mycroft Holmes]

re: I get the impression that things were a lot more permissive in the 1960s than they are today. All the wild all-night parties at the La Honda house and the other strange-goings on. Couldn't get away with that today.

As a 20 year resident of La Honda I can assure you that all you have to do is not annoy the neighbors and you will be left alone. People move here because they don't fit in the city and they are pretty prickly about their (and other's) privacy.