Kesey Journals

Ken Kesey’s notebooks from his stint in jail for marijuana possession will be out in print soon, though the collection is incomplete because two of the notebooks were confiscated before Kesey’s release.

“[W]riting novels was part of the overall way [Kesey] manifested his creativity, but that was never the original plan. Everything he ever did had graphic visual art. His clothing. His rake and ax have painted handles. He was an artist. The floor of his living room is a gigantic mandala. He did that all the time. And he was good,” [Editor David Sanborn] says.

The article is worth a read, if only for the oddly conservative description of San Francisco ca. 1967 as a “freak show.”