Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey, Ed McClanahan (Introduction)
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(Paperback - Reprint)
- Pub. Date: July 1977
- 640pp
- Sales Rank: 44,214
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Product Details
- ISBN-13: 9780140045291
- ISBN: 0140045295
- Edition Description: Reprint
Synopsis
The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what Charles Bowden calls "one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century." This wild-spirited tale tells of a bitter strike that rages through a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers. Out of the Stamper family's rivalries and betrayals Ken Kesey has crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy.
Biography
Ken Kesey (1935—2001) grew up in Oregon. His books include One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Sailor Song, and Last Go Round.
Charles Bowden's most recent books are Inferno and A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior.
Customer Reviews
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- Ratings: 12Reviews: 8
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The Great American Novelby R_Downey
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November 26, 2008:
I have read the books that are commonly referred to as "The Great American Novel," such as: "The Great Gatsby," "Moby Dick," and "Huckleberry Finn." However, I have never before read a book that made me invest my emotions, focus my attention, or identify with characters as much as this one has.
"Sometimes a Great Notion" addresses some (if not all) of the most important and often discussed American themes. Western U.S. Individualism vs. Eastern U.S. Intellectualism, Family Loyalty, Sibling Rivalry, Selfishness vs. Selflessness--all of these themes can be found in Ken Kesey's great epic of the Northwest.
This novel is probably the last and most perfect of the literary period known as Modernism. Influenced greatly by William Faulkner, this novel takes the multiple P.O.V. method used in Fauklner's "Absalom, Absalom!" and perfects it, weaving in and out of the character's minds to give the reader a huge tableau of ideas and opinions.
The characters in Kesey's novel make you care about the fate of the Stamper family. Kesey has fully fleshed out more characters than you can count on one hand. There is no novel that I would recommend more than "Sometimes a Great Notion."
Twice as long as it needed to be.by Anonymous
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September 28, 2008: 35 years ago I gave up on this book shortly after starting it, but I finally forced myself to finish it recently. It took me at least seven weeks to get through it: it was that boring. The writing and themes are actually pretty good, but the endless, pointless descriptions of what each person in town happens to be doing at each moment, all the descriptions of weather and scenery, and irrelevant side dramas just slow the pace to a frustrating crawl. I truly think this book should've been cut to half its size in order to speed up the pace: nothing would have been lost in doing so. All the main events were compressed into a single chapter near the end, and the climax wasn't worth the voluminous material leading up to it. I also didn't like the constant switching between narrators: it was too confusing when picking up the book after a break to try to remember who was telling the story at that point, and because it was so boring, there were a lot of such breaks. Readers who like stories about real men, in the style of 'The Right Stuff,' should like this book's theme, and anyone fond of reading about Oregon biota and rural living in the 1960s will probably enjoy it. For anybody else, I'd say skip it if you can. Kesey may have a reputation for being cool, like in 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,' but this book is nothing like that story.
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