The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1968

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-19

Chapters 20-23

Chapter 24-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Intersubjectivity

A key idea running through The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s quest for intersubjective consciousness, which can entail a loss of individuality and can be described as a shared perception of reality among two or more people. In Chapter 5, Tom Wolfe describes intersubjectivity as the consciousnesses of two or more people opening up and flowing together (61). Throughout the book, the terms group mind, mutual consciousness, and synchronicity are also used, either synonymously with or in conjunction with intersubjectivity.

The first appearance of the idea is in Chapters 2 and 3, when Wolfe describes how the weird and weirdly intense atmosphere at the Warehouse begins to affect his own consciousness. “I am suddenly experiencing their feeling,” he marvels (27). Another mention of intersubjectivity comes in Chapter 5, when Wolfe describes a moment when Sandy Lehmann-Haupt and George Walker used acid in La Honda while sitting in a tree and suddenly Sandy “knows precisely what Walker is thinking” (60).

Another example, one suggesting a more sinister aspect, comes in Chapter 6 when Wolfe describes Stark Naked just before the bus gets to Houston: She has a severe freakout and ends up in the county psychiatric ward. Wolfe writes that she sheds all her clothes and is “waxing extremely freaking ESP” (83). He says that “she keeps coming up to somebody who isn’t saying a goddamn thing and looking into his eyes with the all-embracing look of total acid understanding, our brains are one brain, so let’s visit, you and I” (83).

Intersubjective consciousness—the group mind—is associated with smoothly functioning social units: In Chapter 10, Wolfe describes the trip back to California as “working smoothly on every level” (110). This is not only because “they knew how to run the bus better,” but also because they take turns driving, getting food, copping urinations, shooting the movie, and making tapes (110). Wolfe argues that once the bus crosses the Mississippi, “and they were way out west—then it all merged into the Group Mind and became very psychic” (110).

When Kesey and the Merry Pranksters came up with the idea of Acid Tests in 1965, it was their goal not only that LSD would be introduced to new users, but also that all users of acid could experience this fluid state of intersubjective consciousness. In the book’s final chapter, when Kesey and the Pranksters hold their Acid Test Graduation, they attempt to achieve intersubjectivity with all of the elements of their previous Tests except LSD. The Pranksters sit on the floor in a tight circle and Kesey remarks that they were close, but it fails to happen. Furthermore, the guests are not interested in participating, bringing an end to the organized experiments.

Counterculture

Another idea running through The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is that of the counterculture. Counterculture can be described as any culture or sub-culture that rejects prevailing norms of society. While the term is most commonly associated with the social and political movements of the 1960—the psychedelic movement, the anti-war movement, women’s liberation, and the gay rights movement—a counterculture can rise up in any era and at any time. In 1950s America, for example, the Beat Generation and its beatniks were a countercultural movement focused on personal fulfillment over materialism. The primary character of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Ken Kesey, uniquely links the countercultural beatnik movement of the late 1950s to the countercultural hippie movement of the 1960s. From his time on Perry Lane at Stanford, the Beat Generation had a profound influence on Kesey, and he in turn had a profound influence on the hippie movement that followed him.

Wolfe’s own place in this is as an observer. He never attempted to fit in, and during his interactions with Kesey and the Pranksters, according to interviews conducted later, he dressed in a three-piece suit. The counterculture Wolfe describes takes great interest in fashion and language. In Chapter 1, when Wolfe first meets some Merry Pranksters and rides with them through San Francisco to meet Kesey, who has just been released from jail, he describes their countercultural fashion in detail. He argues:

[T]he cops now know the whole scene, even the costumes, the jesuschrist strung-out hair, Indian beads, Indian headbands, donkey beads, temple bells, amulets, mandalas, god’s eyes, fluorescent vests, unicorn horns, Errol Flynn dueling shirts—but they still don’t know about the shoes (3).

He goes on to explain that “[t]he heads have a thing about shoes,” (3) meaning that they find shiny black shoes with shoelaces, and basically all shoes which are not boots, unhip. Usage of the word “head” in Wolfe’s passage is an example of countercultural language, or jargon. It is used throughout the book to mean “acidheads,” people who use LSD.

Wolfe suggests that their interest in fashion and having their own jargon is a way to fulfill the desire for a group mind. Wolfe himself, according to interviews with the author, always dressed in three-piece suits and never attempted to fit in with the Kesey crowd. He explained that it was easier to conduct interviews that way, and that if he had tried to fit in with the Pranksters, they would have quickly rejected him as insincere.

In Chapter 13, Wolfe details the two-day party that took place in La Honda with the Merry Pranksters and the Hell’s Angels. Wolfe discusses the Hell’s Angels as another countercultural group, one that focuses on their outlaw status. He writes:

[T]he Angels brought a lot of things into synch. Outlaws, by definition, were people who had moved off of dead center and were out in some kind of Edge City. The beauty of it was, the Angels had done it like the Pranksters, by choice. They had become outlaws first—to explore, muvva—and then got busted for it (170).

This is significant because Kesey himself becomes an outlaw and a fugitive.

In Chapter 26, Wolfe discusses Kesey’s “underground summit” concerning the direction of the psychedelic movement. One of the young heads there offended one of the Hell’s Angels in attendance and a tense moment ensued, just short of violence. Wolfe writes of the happening that “the Hell’s Angels came to symbolize the side of the Kesey adventure that panicked the hip world. The Angels were too freaking real” (365). He adds that the hip world, the vast majority of acidheads were still playing the eternal charade of the middle-class intellectuals—“Behold my wings! Freedom! Flight!—but you don’t actually expect me to jump off that cliff, do you?” (365).

New Religion

Another important idea that Wolfe develops is that the Counterculture has the form of a religious movement. Wolfe uses the analogy of religion and religious leaders a number of times in his work to describe the sort of charisma that Kesey had and the sort of devotion that the inspired. Although Kesey never states outright that his goal is to establish a new religion centered around psychedelic drugs, the similarities between himself, the Merry Pranksters, their Acid Tests, and their whole experience and how religions begin is clear. In Chapter 3, when Wolfe flashes forward to Kesey’s return from Mexico, he is approached by a reporter and LSD-proponent who suggests that they either need to isolate themselves in a monastery to use it or they need to “organize a religion along the lines of the League for Spiritual Discovery […] and have acid legalized as sacraments” (28). Kesey, however, disagrees with him by saying that “it can be worse to take it as a sacrament” (28).

The theme of new religion is most obvious in Chapter 11, in which Wolfe explicitly compares the Kesey experience to a religious one. At the beginning of the chapter, he writes that “[he] never heard any of the Pranksters use the word religion to describe the mental atmosphere they shared after the bus trip and the strange days at Big Sur. In fact, they avoided putting it into words” (124). He also explains:

[T]he experience—that was the word! and it began to fall into place. In fact, none of the great founded religions, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, none of them began with a philosophical framework or even a main idea. They all began with an overwhelming new experience (126).

Later in the chapter, Wolfe writes:

[G]radually the Prankster attitude began to involve the main things that religious mystics have always felt, things common to Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and for that matter Theosophists and even flying-saucer cultists. Namely, the experiencing of an Other World, a higher level of reality. And a perception of the cosmic unity of this higher level (142).

In Chapter 14, Kesey is invited to attend and speak at the annual California Unitarian Church Conference in Monterey. When Kesey and the Pranksters arrive, the conference-goers soon split into two camps: those, mostly young people, who see Kesey as a prophetic figure and those, mostly older people, who cannot get on board with some of the actions going on that were an affront even to the most liberal of organized Christianity. In Chapter 18, Wolfe also suggests that the inspiration for the Acid Tests has a religious component: Kesey had spent a night in a graveyard and he emerged with the idea for Acid Tests. Imitating religious texts, Wolfe writes:

[F]or it has been written: […] he develops a strong urge to extend the message to all people […] he develops a ritus, often involving music, dance, liturgy, sacrifice, to achieve an objectified and stereotyped expression of the original spontaneous religious experience (230).

Although Wolfe doesn’t say it outright, the themes he develops in his descriptions of the Pranksters—the religious aspect along with the desire for group mind (Intersubjectivity), a charismatic leader, and a strong in-group ethos—add up to what in the 1970s will be popularly called a cult (the term was mostly restricted to the study of religious performance practices until that time). Although Wolfe suggests as much in his development of these themes, he avoids making any categorical judgments. In interviews, he has described his approach as one based on discovery and objectivity. This latter term might be surprising given the subjective style of reporting that Wolfe championed and that is on display in this book. However, according to Wolfe, “It's possible to have what I call the objectivity of egotism.” In other words, Wolfe’s theory is that the subjective itself is a kind of objectivity because it can “bring human life alive on the page.” This was Wolfe’s goal in writing The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.