The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

The Beat Generation was an American countercultural literary movement that arose in the 1950s focused on works that explored sexual liberation, the use of psychedelic drugs, and a rejection of economic materialism. Some of the most famous writers of the Beat Generation include Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. Neal Cassady, who was one of the Merry Pranksters inner circle members, was also heavily associated with the Beat Generation as he was the model for the primary character in Kerouac’s novel On the Road. Tom Wolfe makes the case that the Merry Pranksters, and especially Ken Kesey, were something of a bridge between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the Hippies of the late-1960s.

The bus itself was a 1939 International Harvester school bus which the Pranksters painted with Day-Glo colors and rigged to have an intricate sound system and a platform for riding on top. Nicknamed “Furthur,” the Pranksters took the bus from California to New York and back in 1964. Lingo about “on the bus” and “off the bus” developed among the Pranksters to categorize those who were with the program or believers and those who were outsiders.

Beautiful People is a term that Wolfe uses repeatedly to refer to kids in the 1960s who were “attuned,” meaning that they had begun using psychedelic drugs (133). He calls them Beautiful People because of “the Beautiful People letters they used to write their parents,” which typically said they were okay and they are now in a beautiful scene, and that they are sorry it did not work out for them at school (134-35). According to Wolfe, these were kids who found culture, truth, and beauty to be very important (134).

The Grateful Dead is a rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The Dead were the seminal band in the psychedelic, or acid, rock subgenre. The band plays a critical role in Wolfe’s work because they functioned as the regular house band for the Merry Pranksters’ Acid Tests. Additionally, Owsley, who was the Merry Pranksters’ LSD supplier, became the financial backer and sound engineer for the band in its early years.

Haight-Ashbury is a neighborhood in San Francisco that served as the epicenter of the psychedelic movement of the mid-1960s and the hippie movement of the later 1960s. The neighborhood itself had come to be synonymous with the Counterculture of the 1960s in general. Much of the second half of the book focuses on the happenings of Haight-Ashbury and how the area transformed into a carnival atmosphere almost overnight, which was largely because of the Pranksters’ Acid Tests.

La Honda, California is the small town roughly an hour from both San Francisco and Palo Alto. Kesey first moves there with his wife, Faye, and their kids when he leaves Stanford, as a result of a developer buying the Perry Lane property. Kesey’s place in La Honda is very wooded and secluded and ends up being the home for many of the Merry Pranksters as well.

Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD or acid, is a powerful psychedelic drug that leads to intensified thoughts, emotions, or sensory perception. In addition to marijuana, LSD was the primary drug used by Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and what was given to guests at their Acid Tests in the mid-1960s.

Manzanillo is a tourist town on the West Coast of Mexico. This is where Kesey settles while in on the lam in Mexico and is eventually joined there by several other Pranksters. The Pranksters hold an Acid Test in Manzanillo despite being under surveillance by a mysterious Mexican secret agent.

The Merry Pranksters were a countercultural group led by author Ken Kesey in the mid-1960s. The Pranksters lived communally at Kesey’s home in La Honda, California, and many followed him to Mexico when he fled there to avoid jail time. The primary characteristic of the Pranksters was the use of psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD and marijuana. In the mid-1960s, the Merry Pranksters began holding Acid Tests in order to bring the drug to a wider audience. Some of the primary members included Kesey and his wife Faye, Ken Babbs, George Walker, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, Mike Hagen, Neal Cassady, Paula Sundsten, and Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Adams.

The Movie, or “in the Movie” is a slang expression used frequently by the Pranksters. It refers to the idea that everything is a movie playing out and one needs to draw people and situations into their movie to have control.

“On the bus” is a metaphor that Kesey uses throughout the book to indicate whether or not someone is committed to the Pranksters vision.