IT’S ALL A KIND OF MAGIC: The Young Ken Kese by Rick Dodgson (review)

Rick Dodgson’s account of the early life of Ken Kesey presents the One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nes. (1962) author (and counterculture icon) as a bold, arrogant, and chauvinistic young man. Kesey identified closely with Hollywood rebels Marlon Brando and James Dean. He was a talented wrestler (and even tried out for the Olympic team), and he was a popular member of his fraternity at the University of Oregon. At parties and in graduate school courses, Kesey insisted on being the center of attention, and, in Dodgson’s words, “either you could decide to like . . . his alpha male personality, or you could let him irritate the hell out of you” (166). The irritated included many of Kesey’s neighbors, classmates, and instructors, often with good reason.

But Dodgson also captures Kesey’s undeniable talent as a writer and performer. He traces Kesey’s early fascination with magic, acting, and writing for his school newspapers. He also touches on Kesey’s many unsuccessful attempts to find work in Hollywood, and, in one of the most fascinating accounts in the book, discusses the failure of the Kirk Douglas–led Broadway adaptation of Cuckoo’s Nest. Having sold the rights, Kesey also forfeited royalties from subsequent theatrical interpretations and the award-winning film version, starring Jack Nicholson.

Strangely, Dodgson focuses very little on Cuckoo’s Nes. or Kesey’s follow-up Sometimes a Great Notio. (1964). Even more surprisingly, he says very little about the Sixties counterculture itself. The book ends, anticlimactically, just before Kesey’s famous, drug-infused 1964 road trip with the Merry Pranksters, but Dodgson never fully explains the trip’s historical significance. Much of the book centers on Kesey’s life in the hip Perry Lane neighborhood of Menlo Park, California—complete with psychedelic drugs, free love, and occasional interactions with the Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, and Neal Cassady. Aside from a history of psychedelics, however, the wider cultural implications of the moment are almost entirely ignored.

There are other shortcomings, as well. Dodgson writes using a variety of clichés, colloquialisms, and hyperboles, and the book sometimes reads like a 1930s radio drama. Dodgson also awkwardly refers to Ken and Faye Kesey as “Kesey and Faye,” and he uses the 1968 Columbia University strike to illustrate fraternity politics in Oregon more than a decade earlier. Most egregiously, rather than take Kesey to task or explore the changing values of the period, Dodgson defends Kesey against accusations of racism and sexism (the former included performances in blackface), offering weakly, “Kesey was never a racist at heart” (53).

Despite these missteps, the book is clearly a labor of love, and the energy that Dodgson brings to the project is admirable. The book likely suffers from Faye Kesey and “prankster” Ken Babb’s decisions to deny Dodgson access to the unpublished manuscripts that he used for his original doctoral dissertation. In the end, It’s All a Kind of Magi. should still be a fun read for Kesey fans, but it misses an opportunity to make a more substantial intervention.