“The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”

Abstract

Along with writers like Norman Mailer and Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe’s works of the mid-1960s ushered in the age of “new journalism,” a term that Wolfe (born 1930) himself coined. His celebrated bestselling novel, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, broke with many of the conventions to which reporters and journalists typically adhered. Rather than simply describing from an objective standpoint the adventures of author/LSD guru Ken Kesey (1935-2001) and his coterie, The Merry Pranksters, Wolfe positions himself as an anonymous, informed insider who narrates the group’s exploits in exaggerated, sensational detail. This fantastical approach is accompanied by a turn to fictional literary devices, whether it be Wolfe’s penchant for inventive grammatical constructions or his tendency to flesh out the narrative through the imagined dialogue and thought processes of the story’s central characters. In the passage featured here, Wolfe recounts one of the early “acid tests” or LSD experiments, at Muir Beach (December 11, 1965), which would provide the impetus for the large-scale Trips Festival held in San Francisco in January 1966, one of the first events of the emerging counterculture to draw nationwide media attention. Jerry Garcia (1942-1995) and the Grateful Dead were integral components of the acid tests and they figure prominently in Wolfe’s descriptions. Their live music performances were at the center of a barrage of light designs, film projections, electronic sound manipulations, and experimental drugs, all of which fused together to make the acid test a truly mixed media event. Wolfe’s book remains widely read precisely because it captures the LSD experience in such vibrant language, a fact made all the more remarkable by Wolfe’s claim that he never ingested any of the drugs himself.

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