Books

Barnstable, MA: Crane Duplicating Service, Inc. for 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 1960's, in which he recounts his experiences traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Essentially the earliest obtainable format of the text, created directly from the publisher's long galley sheets by Crane Duplicating Service, a small print shop in Barnstable, MA whose sole function was the printing and binding of publisher's advance copies. A preliminary leaf prints a half-page statement by Crane's, with some chapter headings, a few small corrections, and page numbers written by hand (in copy), along with a potentially libellous two-line passage struck through (p.149, again in copy). A side-by-side reading against the finished text shows a few dozen mis-spelled words, dropped letters, and a few awkward spaces. While no hard numbers are known for how many such…

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.