A report on Ken Kesey, Beat Generation and Counterculture of the 1960s
Ken Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure.
- Ken KeseyHe considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.
- Ken KeseyIn the 1960s, elements of the expanding Beat movement were incorporated into the hippie and larger counterculture movements.
- Beat GenerationNeal Cassady, as the driver for Ken Kesey's bus Furthur, was the primary bridge between these two generations.
- Beat GenerationThe popularization of LSD outside of the medical world was hastened when individuals such as Ken Kesey participated in drug trials and liked what they saw.
- Counterculture of the 1960sThe Pranksters created a direct link between the 1950s Beat Generation and the 1960s psychedelic scene; the bus was driven by Beat icon Neal Cassady, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was on board for a time, and they dropped in on Cassady's friend, Beat author Jack Kerouac—though Kerouac declined to participate in the Prankster scene.
- Counterculture of the 1960s4 related topics with Alpha
Allen Ginsberg
3 linksAmerican poet and writer.
American poet and writer.
As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation.
Later in his life, Ginsberg formed a bridge between the beat movement of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s, befriending, among others, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bob Dylan.
Along with other counterculture ideologists like Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, and Alan Watts, Ginsberg hoped to incorporate Bhaktivedanta Swami and his chanting into the hippie movement, and agreed to take part in the Mantra-Rock Dance concert and to introduce the swami to the Haight-Ashbury hippie community.
Neal Cassady
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Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s.
Cassady first met author Ken Kesey during the summer of 1962; he eventually became one of the Merry Pranksters, a group that formed around Kesey in 1964, who were vocal proponents of the use of psychedelic drugs.
Hippie
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A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around the world.
The Beats adopted the term hip, and early hippies inherited the language and countercultural values of the Beat Generation.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, novelist Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally in California.
William S. Burroughs
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William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature.
Their mutual influence became the foundation of the Beat Generation, which was later a defining influence on the 1960s counterculture.
Prominent admirers of Burroughs' work have included British critic and biographer Peter Ackroyd, the rock critic Lester Bangs, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the authors J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Jean Genet, William Gibson, Alan Moore, Kathy Acker and Ken Kesey.