Books

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968. First Edition. Wolfe's third and most enduring book, a major work of the New Journalism and one of the defining books of the 1960s, in which he recounts his experiences traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, whom he would not have met if not for Larry McMurtry. In 1960, McMurtry was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University's Creative Writing Center, along with Kesey, Wendell Berry, Robert Stone, and others. He and Kesey lived near each other and became close friends and correspondents over the coming years. On p.6 of the book, Wolfe mentions how those letters between McMurtry and Kesey became the genesis of his idea for this book: "One day I happened to get hold of some letters Kesey wrote from Mexico to his friend Larry McMurtry, who wrote Horseman, Pass By, from which the movie Hud was made. They were wild and ironic, written like a cross between William Burroughs and George Ade, telling of hideouts, disguises,…

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test chronicles the experiences of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they travel across the United States in a colorful bus, promoting the use of psychedelic drugs.