Over the cuckoo's nest

Vick Lovell,

who told me

that there are no dragons

and then brought them to their lair.

... Some from home, some into the house, some over the cuckoo's nest.

Blacks in white suits, got up before me, relieve sex in the hallway and wipe them up until I covered them.

They wipe when I leave the bedroom: three, gloomy, angry at everything - in the morning, at this house, at those with whom they work. When angry, do not catch their eyes. I make my way along the wall in canvas shoes, quiet as a mouse, but their special equipment detects my fear: they raise their heads, all three at once, their eyes shine on black faces like lamps in an old receiver.

There he is, the leader. The main leader, guys. Chief Mop. Come on, leaders.

They shove me a rag, show me where to wash today, and I go. One hit me in the back on the legs with a brush: move.

You see, I was running around. So long, he can take an apple from my head with his teeth, but he listens like a child.

They laugh, then I hear them whispering behind me, their heads made up. Black cars are buzzing, abuzz with hatred, death, and other hospital secrets. When I’m around, they still don’t bother to speak quietly about their evil secrets - they think I’m deaf and dumb. And everyone thinks so. At least there was enough cunning to deceive them. If half of the Indian blood helped me in this dirty life, it helped me to be cunning, helped me all the years.

My floor is in front of the door of the department, a key is inserted from the outside, and I understand that this is an older sister: softly, quickly, obediently the lock gives in to the key; she has been wielding these keys for a long time. With a wave of cold air, she slips into the corridor, locks behind her, and I see her fingers finally pass over the polished steel - nails the same color as her lips. Orange straight. Like a soldering iron tip. Hot or cold color, you can't even understand when they touch you.

She has a wicker bag like the one the Ampqua tribe sells off the hot August highway, shaped like a toolbox, with a hemp handle. How many years I have been here, how many years she has this bag. Weaving is rare, I see that inside: no lipstick, no powder compact, no women's junk, only wheels, gears, cogs, polished to a shine, tiny pills whitening like porcelain, needles, tweezers, watch tongs, coils of copper wire.

She walks past me, nods. I follow the mop to the wall, smile and, in order to more reliably deceive her equipment, I hide my eyes - when my eyes are closed, it’s more difficult to understand you.

In the dark she walks past me, I hear her rubber heels knocking on the tiles and clattering goods in her bag at every step. Steps woodenly. When I open my eyes, she is already in the back of the corridor turning into a glass nursing post - she will sit there all day at the table, looking through the window for eight hours and writing down what is happening in the day room. Her face is calm and contented in front of this matter.

But as soon as she began to rake the black orderlies with these sliding hands, and they gut her belly with the handles of the mops, the sick come out of the bedrooms to see what kind of market is there, and she takes her previous form so that they would not see her in a natural, creepy guise. While the patients rubbed their eyes, until they somehow made out the sleepiness, which is why the noise, in front of them is just an older sister, as always calm, restrained, and with a smile tells the orderlies that you should not gather in a bunch and chat, because today is Monday, first morning of the working week, so many things to do ...

- ... you know, Monday morning ...

Yes, Miss Abominable ...

“… And we have so many appointments for this morning… so if you don’t have a special need to stand here together and chat…”

Yes, Miss Abominable ...

She fell silent, nodded to the sick, who gathered around and looked with red eyes swollen with sleep. She nodded to each one individually. Clear, automatic movement. Her face is smooth, calibrated, precise workout, like an expensive doll - the skin is like flesh-colored enamel, cream-white, clear blue eyes, a short nose with small pink nostrils, everything is in tune, except for the color of the lips and nails and the size of the chest ... Somewhere they made a mistake when assembling, they put such large female breasts on an otherwise perfect device, and you can see how upset she is by this.

The patients are still standing, wanting to know why she attacked the orderlies; then she remembers that she saw me and says:

Since today is Monday, let’s shave poor Mr. Bromden first to get the ball rolling, so maybe we’ll avoid the usual… uh… turmoil — after breakfast in the shaving room we’ll be crowded.

As they turn to me, I dive back into the rag closet, slam my daughter's door, and stop breathing. It's not worse when they shave you before breakfast. If you have time to chew, you are not so weak and not so sleepy, and these bastards who work at the Combine find it difficult to get close to you with any of their machines. But if they shave before breakfast - and she arranged that - at half past six, in a room with white walls and white sinks, with long fluorescent tubes in the ceiling so that there are no shadows, and faces all around you are screaming, locked behind mirrors, that then can you against their cars?

I was buried in a closet for rags, I listen, my heart is pounding in the dark, and I try not to get scared, I try to drive my thoughts away from here, think and remember something about our village and the big Columbia river, I remember how that time, oh, my dad and I they hunted birds in the cedar grove near Dulles ... But whenever I try to drive my thoughts into the past, to hide there, intimate fear still seeps through my memories. I feel that a small black orderly is walking down the corridor, sniffing at my fear. He flares up his nostrils with black funnels, twirls his big head to and fro, sniffs, draws in fear from all over the squad. Smell me, hear him snort. Doesn't know where I was hiding, but he senses it, looks for it by scent. I freeze ...

(Daddy says to me: freeze; says that the dog smelled a bird, somewhere nearby. We borrowed a pointer from a man in Dalls City. Our village dogs are useless mongrels, Dad says, dogs - she has instinct! I do not say anything, but I can already see a bird in the cedar undergrowth - shriveled up in a gray lump of feathers. The dog runs in circles below - the smell is everywhere, you can't understand where it came from. The bird froze, and as long as so, nothing threatens it. She holds on firmly, but the dog circles and sniffs, louder and closer. And now the bird has risen, spreading its feathers, and flies out of the cedar right onto my father's shot.)

Before I could even run ten paces, the little orderly and one of the big ones catch me and drag me to the shaving room. I do not make noise, I do not resist. You scream - you're worse off. I hold back a cry. Holding back until they get to the temples. Until now, I did not know, maybe it really is a razor, and not one of their replacement machines, but when they got to their temples, I can no longer restrain myself. What will there be, when we got to the temples. Then ... the button was pressed: air raid alert! Air raid! - and she turns me on at such a volume that it seems as if there is no sound, everyone yells at me from behind the glass wall, plugging their ears, faces in a talking whirlwind, but not a sound from their mouths. My noise absorbs all noise. They turn on the foggy car again, and it snows on me cold and white, like skim milk, so thick that it could have hidden in it if I had not been kept. In the fog I don’t see ten centimeters and through the howl I can only hear my older sister, how she hurts down the corridor with a whoop, knocking patients off the road with a wicker bag. I can hear her footsteps, but I cannot interrupt the cry. I scream until she comes up. Two are holding me, and she has hammered a wicker bag with all the good into my mouth and pushes it deeper with a mop handle.

(The hound barks in the fog, she gets lost and rushes about in fright, because she does not see. On the ground, there are no traces, except for her own, she drives a red rubber nose, but there are no smells either, it smells only of her fear, which scalds her insides, like steam .) And I will be scalded the same way, and I will finally tell about everything - about the hospital, about it, about the people here ... And about McMurphy. I have been silent for so long that it will break through me like a dam in a flood, and you will think that the person telling this is talking nonsense, you will think that such horror does not happen in life, such horrors cannot be true. But please. It is still difficult for me to collect my thoughts when I think about it. But everything is true, even if it did not happen.

When the fog clears and I begin to see, I sit in the day room. This time I was not taken to the Shock Shalman. I remember being dragged out of the bril and locked in an isolation ward. I don’t remember whether breakfast was given or not. Probably, not. I can remember those mornings in the isolation ward, when the orderlies carried the scraps of breakfast - as if for me, and they ate themselves - they have breakfast, and I lie on the mattress and watch as they wipe an egg on a plate with toasted bread. It smells of bacon, bread crunches in their teeth. And another time they will bring cold porridge and force them to eat, even without salt.

I don't remember this morning at all. They stuffed me with so many of these things, which they call pills, that I didn't think anything until I heard the door to the department open. The door opened - it means that it’s eight or nine, which means that I spent an hour and a half in the isolation ward, technicians could come and install anything on the orders of my older sister, and I don’t even know what!

I hear a noise at the front door, at the beginning of the corridor, I can't see it from here. This door begins to open at eight, open and close a hundred times a day, tyt-tyr, click. Every morning after breakfast, we sit down along two walls in the day room, put together puzzle pictures, listen to if the lock will click, wait for what will appear there. There is nothing more to do. Sometimes one of the young doctors living at the hospital comes early to see us before taking the medication - they call DPL. Sometimes the wife visits someone, in high heels, her purse squeezed to her belly. Sometimes that PR fool brings in elementary school teachers; he always claps his sweaty palms and says how happy he is that asylums for the mentally ill have done away with the old-regime cruelty: "What a spiritual environment, you must agree!" The teachers huddled together for safety, and he twists around, clapping his hands: "No, when I think back to the old days, dirt, poor food and, to be honest, abuse, I understand, ladies: we have made big progress!" Whoever enters the door is always not the one whom one would like to see, but hope always remains, and as soon as the lock clicks, all heads rise at once, as if on ropes.

Today the castles are rattling wonderfully, this is no ordinary visitor. The voice of the attendant, irritated and impatient: "New patient, go sign." And the black ones come up.

Newbie. Everyone stops playing cards and "monopoly", turns to the door to the corridor. On another day, I would now chalk the corridor and see who is being accepted, but today, as I have already explained to you, my older sister has thrust a hundred kilograms into me, and I cannot tear myself away from the chair. On another day, I would be the first to see the newcomer, watch him slip through the door, make his way along the wall, stand fearfully until the orderlies make an appointment; then they will take him to the shower room, undress him, leave him shivering in front of the open door, while they themselves run along the corridors with a grin, looking for Vaseline. "We need petroleum jelly," they will tell the older sister, "for the thermometer." And she then glances at one, then at the other: "I have no doubt that you need it, and she will give them a can of almost half a bucket, - just look, don't get all together there." Then I see in the shower two, or even all three, together with the newcomer, they smear the thermometer with a layer almost as thick as a finger, singing: "Oh so from, mom, oh so from," then they slam the door and turn on all the souls so that nothing could be heard except the angry hiss of water hitting the green tiles. Most often I'm in the hallway and I see everything.

But today I am sitting in a chair and can only hear him being brought in. And although there is nothing to see, I feel that this is not an ordinary newcomer. I don’t hear him making his way along the wall in fear, and when they talk to him about his soul, he doesn’t obey with a timid, quiet “yes”, but immediately answers in a loud, bold voice that he is already quite clean, thank you, damn it.

In the morning I was washed in court and in prison last night. And in a taxi here they would have washed to the holes, by God, if they had found a shower there. Eh, guys, how to transport me somewhere, so they scrub before, and after, and during delivery. I got to the point that I hear water - I immediately rush to collect my things. Fuck off with your thermometer, Sam, let me at least look around in my new apartment. I have never been to the Institute of Psychology.

The patients look at each other, puzzled, and again at the door where the voice comes from. And he says why so loudly - after all, the black guys are around? The voice is as if it is above them and speaks down, as if it hovers twenty meters above the ground and shouts to those below. He speaks strongly. I can hear him walking down the corridor, and walking strongly, now he doesn't make his way; he has iron on his heels and knocks on the floor like horseshoes. He appears at the door, stops, puts his thumbs in his pockets, spreads his legs and stands, and the patients look at him.

Good morning guys.

A paper bat hangs over his head on a string - since All Saints Day; he raises his hand and twirls it with a snap.

What a pleasant autumn day.

He speaks like a dad, his voice is loud and mischievous; but he himself does not look like dad: dad was a pure-blooded Colombian Indian, the leader - hard and glossy, like a rifle butt. And this redhead, with long red tops and disheveled, long-uncut curls that protrude from under his cap, and he is all as wide as dad was tall: his jaw is wide, and shoulders, and chest, and a wide, toothy smile - and it’s different from Dad’s hardness — the hardness of a baseball under ragged skin. Across his nose and across his cheekbone, he has a scar - someone has repaired him well in a fight - and the stitches have not been removed yet. He stands and waits, but no one even thought to answer him, and then he begins to laugh. Nobody knows why he laughs: nothing funny happened. And he laughs not like this one in public relations - he laughs loudly, freely, grinning cheerfully, and the laughter spreads out in circles, wider, wider, throughout the entire department, splashing into the walls. Not a wad of laughter on public relations. I suddenly realized that I was hearing laughter for the first time in many years.

He stands, looks at us, pumping out on his heels, and laughs, pours out. His thumbs are in his pockets, and the rest he sticks out on his stomach. I see that his hands are big and have been in many alterations. Both patients and staff - everyone in the department is dumbfounded by his appearance, his laughter. Nobody thought to stop him or say anything. Laughing enough, he enters the day room. Now he doesn’t laugh, but laughter still trembles around him, just as the sound continues to tremble in the large bell that has just rung - it is in the eyes, in a smile, in a daring gait, in a voice.

My name is McMurphy, guys, R.P. McMurphy, and I'm weak for cards. - He winks, sings: - ... And as soon as I see the deck, I put money on the table to the sword ... - And he laughs again.

Then he comes up to some group of gamblers, touches the cards of one of the sharp ones with a thick, rough finger, looks at them, squinting, and shakes his head.

Yeah, that's why I came to your establishment - to entertain and amuse you, eccentrics, at the gambling table. There was no one to brighten up my days at the Pendleton Correctional Farm, so I demanded a transfer, okay? Ho ho, look how this goose holds the cards - the whole barrack can be seen. I'll trim you guys like sheep.

Cheswick shifts his cards. The redhead holds out his hand.

Great, friend, what are we playing? In the "thousand"? You don't try very hard to hide cards. Don't you have a decent deck here? Then let's go - I brought mine just in case, there are not simple pictures in it ... Yes, you check them out, eh? All different. Fifty-two positions.

Cheswick's eyes are already wide, and what he just saw didn't make him any better.

Take it easy, don't rubbish; we have plenty of time, we'll play enough. That's why I like to play with my deck - at least a week goes by while other players at least see the suit.

He is wearing camp trousers and a shirt that have burnt to the color of skimmed milk. His face, neck and arms are dark crimson from long work in the field. A motorcycle cap that looks like a black capsule is tangled in his hair, a leather jacket is thrown over his arm, boots on his feet, gray, dusty and so heavy that one kick can break a person in half. He walks away from Cheswick, pulls off his cap and knocks a dust storm from his thigh with it. One orderly hovers around him with a thermometer, but you can't catch him: as soon as the negro takes aim, he gets into a bunch of sharp ones and starts shaking hands with everyone in turn. His conversation, a wink, a loud voice, an important gait - all this reminds me of a car salesman, or a cattle auctioneer, or such a fair trader - his goods may not be the main one and he stands on the side, but flags are fluttering behind him, and his shirt is on he is striped, and the buttons are yellow, and all faces turn towards him as if magnetized.

You see, what a story: to tell the truth, I had a few warm conversations at the correctional farm, and the court ruled that I was a psychopath. Why am I going to argue with the court? God forbid. Call me a psychopath, even a mad dog, or a ghoul, just get me off the pea fields, because I agree not to hug their hoe until my death. They tell me: a psychopath is someone who fights too much and too much ... che ... Here they are wrong, what do you think? Where is it heard that a person has an overload of women? Great, but what do they call you? I’m McMurphy and I’m betting two dollars that you don’t know how many glasses you have on hand now - don’t look! Two dollars, huh? Damn it Sam! Can you not poke your stupid thermometer for at least half a minute?

Ken Kesey(English Ken Elton Kesey, 09/17/1935 - 11/10/2001) - American writer. He is considered one of the main writers of the beat generation and the generation of hippies.
Born in La Honda, Colorado, the son of an oil mill owner. In 1946 he moved to Springfield, Oregon. Kesey spent his youth on his father's farm in the Willamette Valley, where he grew up and was raised in a respectable, devout American family. At school, and then in college, Kesey was fond of sports and even became the state champion in wrestling, although even then he dreamed of becoming a writer. After leaving school, Ken runs away from home with his classmate Faye Haxby. Subsequently, Faye will become the eternal faithful companion of the counterculture ideologue and will give birth to four children from him (two sons and two daughters). Kesey graduated from the Department of Journalism at the University of Oregon in 1957. He became interested in literature, was awarded the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship and enrolled in writing courses at Stanford University.
Kesey was constantly in financial need and the need for money, but he could not find work in his specialty. Finally, in 1959, he went to work as an assistant psychiatrist at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, where he volunteered for experiments to study the effects on the body of LSD, mescaline and other psychedelics.
In 1964, together with like-minded friends, he organized a hippie commune called Merry Pranksters. The commune held happenings called "Acid Tests" with the distribution of LSD to all comers. "Acid tests" were often accompanied by lighting effects (strobe lights) and music played live by the young band The Warlocks, which later became widely known, changing their name to the Grateful Dead.
In the same year, Kesey was invited to New York. Having bought an old International Harvest school bus from 1939, the Pranksters painted it with bright fluorescent paints, called it "Furthur" (a modification of the word further - further). And, having invited Neil Cassady to the driver's seat, they went on a trip across America to Flushing (New York State) to the International Exhibition, which the most prominent publicist and historian of the XX century Jean Baudrillard called “the strangest journey in the entire history of mankind, after the hike for the golden fleece the Argonauts and Moses' forty-year wandering in the desert "..
When LSD was outlawed in the United States, the Jolly Pranksters moved to Mexico. But upon returning to the United States, Kesey was arrested for possession of marijuana and sentenced to 5 months.
Following his release, Kesey moved to Pleasant Hill, Oregon to devote himself to his family. He began to lead a measured, secluded life, took up agriculture, but continued to write. In the 90s, when fashion and the idols of the 60s were revived, Kesey began to appear in public again. In 1995, "The Pranksters" got together again to say goodbye to terminally ill cancer Timothy Leary. Having found a rusted Dalshe bus in a swampy pasture, they painted it again and went to the Hog Farm Pig-Nick festival. In 1997, during the performance of the song "The Rise of Colonel Forbin" at the concert of the group "Phish", Kesey took the stage for the last time with the "Pranksters".
In recent years, Kesey was very sick. He had diabetes, liver cancer and a stroke. He underwent surgery, but after 2 weeks the writer's condition deteriorated sharply. Ken Kesey died at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene, Oregon at the age of 66.

Throughout his life, Ken Kesey amazed those around him with his scandalous antics and resonant actions. But, despite this, he always remained great in his own way. This means that this article will not be in vain.

The childhood and tempestuous years of writer Ken Kesey

Thus, the childhood of our today's hero passed away from the noise of big cities. Ken grew up in the Willamette Valley, where his parents raised him as a devout Christian and respectable American.

During his school years, Ken Kesey was fond of sports and even managed to win the state championship in freestyle wrestling. However, due to the banal lack of assembly of a professional athlete, it did not work out of him. At one point, the guy began to skip workouts, and later gave up sports altogether.

Leaving sports, Ken Kesey decided to leave his former life as well. Having collected all the essentials, one day the guy just ran away and at home, so as not to return. A constant companion of the writer on this journey was his classmate Faye Haxby, who later gave birth to four children.

During this period, our today's hero became an ardent admirer of hippie culture, and also began to get involved in the art of writing for the first time. It all started with reading. After that, Ken began to engage in his own literary work. However, at the very beginning, his works were not structured in any way, and therefore something specific about them is not known today. It seemed that the most important thing in all this was writing as such, and not any specific work.

In the early fifties, the future famous author entered the University of Oregon, where he began to study at the Faculty of Journalism. At this very moment, Ken Kesey changed a lot. He became somewhat more conscientious about his studies. Therefore, his small essays turned out to be surprisingly deep and soulful. That is why, in one of his senior years, Ken received the prestigious Woodrow Wilson National Scholarship.

Ken Kesey

Somewhat later, he also began to attend courses in writing, which operated at Stanford University. Around the same period, Kesey and his wife moved from northern Oregon to the Perry Lane area, which was then called American England. Representatives of the intellectual elite lived here - prim writers and other representatives of the upper class. Among these people, Ken Kesey felt a bit alien. However, later he still learned how to benefit from everything.

In 1959, Ken Kesey took a job at the Veterans Hospital, where he began working as an assistant psychologist. In parallel with this, he participated in experiments on testing LSD and some other psychedelics, for which he received good money.

At first everything was pretty decorous, but later our today's hero literally "got hooked" on these drugs. Having gained unlimited access to psycho-logical means, a few years later, Kesey formed the Merry Pranksters commune, which hosted a kind of parties, a distinctive feature of which were flickering lights, loud music and mountains of LSD, which were distributed to everyone.

Flying over Cuckoo's Nest. Official Trailer

Such parties literally turned the entire Perry Lane area upside down, and subsequently had a huge impact on the popularization of LSD, the harmful properties of which had not yet been proven. Thus, Ken Kesey became the founder and ideologist of a new philosophy of life, which later became an integral part of the entire Western world.

Career writer and philosopher Ken Kesey

One One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was published in 1962 and was a resounding success. Kesey made no secret of the fact that he wrote the book under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. However, this only only increased the popularity of his novel, as well as the entire philosophy of "Merry Pranksters".

The first published novel by the writer was instantly transformed into a popular production by Dale Wasserman, followed by new interpretations. In particular, Milos Forman's film became widely known, which received five Oscar awards at once.

After the release of the first book, Ken Kesey wrote several more novels, as well as collections of essays. The most famous among them was the book "At times, a great whim", which was also subsequently filmed.

The last years of Ken Kesey's life, cause of death

Later in his life, Ken Kesey wrote plays, traveled around the country in a painted bus, hid in Mexico from drug fighters, and also always remained true to himself. He served time for possession of marijuana, but even then he did not turn off the intended path. Only the death that came for the writer in November 2001 was able to stop the insane course of Ken Kesey's life. Before that, the famous philosopher was often ill. He was diagnosed with liver cancer, diabetes, and heart problems. As a result, a complex of diseases led to the death of the famous author, who, however, could not take his philosophy with her. Ken Kesey remained a symbol of his time even after his death.

Ken Kesey's personal life

Ken Kesey was born in the village of La Junta, which is located in the US state of Colorado. His father, Frederic Kesey, owned an oil mill, and his mother, Geneva Smith, ran a household. The Kesey upbringing was religious and devout.

When Ken was 11 years old, the family moved to the state of Oriegon, in the Willamette Valley, which is a suburb of Springfield. There was a farm that had previously belonged to my paternal grandfather.

Ken attended parish and later high school. In the latter, he became interested in power sports and even became the state champion in wrestling. While studying at a local college, the young man repeated this achievement and even entered the expanded list of participants for the Olympic team, but an unexpected shoulder injury interrupted his sports career.

Then Ken Kesey returns to his education and enters the University of Oregon, where he studies journalism and is seriously interested in literature. After this university, thanks to the received grant and the Woodrow Wilson National Scholarship, he immediately studies at Stanford University in the direction of "Writing skills". But the young man did not have enough money from the grant, so he got a job at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, where he held the position of a medical orderly, and was also a participant in experiments on the effects on the body of various psychotropic drugs, including LSD.

In 1964, having gathered several close friends, Ken organized a hippie commune, which he calls the "Merry Pranksters". Their main goal was to arrange musical parties, at which the then beginning group "Grateful Dead" played, to have fun and invite everyone to pass the "acid test", that is, try LSD or some other psychotropic drug practically free of charge.

The Pranksters also had their own used International Harvest school bus, which they painted with fluorescent paints in vibrant colors and made several trips across America, including the famous trip to New York for the International Exhibition.

Later, the US police became interested in Ken Kesey, charging him with possession and use of illegal drugs. Kesey tried to hide in Mexico, while faking his own suicide, but on his return after 8 months he was immediately arrested and sentenced to 5 months in prison.

Books

Ken Kesey's first literary attempt at writing was the novella Zoo about a commune of beatniks and hippies, which he wrote in 1959 but never published. A year later, he writes the story "The End of Autumn", in which he talks about growing up. This story also had some autobiography and was also not published.

While working in a hospital for veterans, the aspiring writer came up with the idea of ​​a novel about patients in a psychiatric hospital who are actually quite healthy, but the traditional society rejects them for various reasons. In 1962, a novel called One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was published, but at first it did not bring much success to the author. A year later, based on the book, a performance by Dale Wasserman was released, and then popularity fell on the writer.

Kesey's next major book was the novel Sometimes a Great Whim, in which the writer uses realism as the foundation for a real literary experiment. This work received mixed criticism, but was later named one of the most important American books of the 2nd half of the 20th century.

After that, the writer focused on journal publications, short stories and essays. Over the next 20 years, publishers published only the collection of stories "Garage Sale" in 1973 and "When the Angels Appeared" in 1986. Also in 1990, Ken Kesey's play A Further Investigation was staged.

The third full-length novel "The Sailor's Song" appeared only in 1992 and was a new experiment, since the plot of the book is rather incoherent and ambiguous. In 1994, Ken Kesey's last novel, The Last Run, was released, which he co-wrote with his old friend from The Pranksters, Ken Babbs, and the play The Deceiver was staged.

Then again there were publications in periodicals. The last book to be published in print was the collection of stories "Prison Journal", which was published in 2003 after the death of the writer.

Personal life

After leaving school, Ken Kesey ran away from his parents' home with his classmate Faye Haxby. This couple will go on all their lives together, although because of their views on life, they never entered into an official marriage.

In this civil marriage, Ken and Fay had three children - sons Jed, Zane and daughter Shannon. Ken also had a daughter, Sunshine Kesey, from one of the Gay Pranksters, Carolyn Adams. Moreover, Faye Haxby gave her consent to this relationship.

Death

After being released from prison, where he was imprisoned for possession of marijuana, Ken Kesey left for his Pleasant Hill farm in the Willamette Valley. The writer lived here until the end of his life. He was engaged in agriculture, led a secluded and calm life.

He left the Kesey family farm only twice in the 90s, to meet with his former comrades-in-arms from the "Merry Pranksters" commune. Ken Kesey last appeared in public in 1997. The writer was already very ill then. He developed diabetes mellitus and was later diagnosed with liver cancer. And in 2001, Kesey suffered a stroke. A successful operation was carried out, there was an improvement, but after 2 weeks his health deteriorated again, and on November 10, 2001, at the age of 67, Ken Kesey died in the Sacred Heart Hospital.

Bibliography

• 1962 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• 1964 - Sometimes a great whim
• 1973 - Garage Sale
• 1986 - When the angels appeared
• 1990 - Further investigation
• 1992 - Song of the sailor
• 1994 - Last race
• 1994 - Deceiver
• 2003 - Prison Journal

When I was working in the judiciary, I remember one case. The administration of the neuropsychiatric dispensary petitioned the court to change the type of hospital for one of its patients: they asked to change the general type hospital (compulsory treatment without intensive supervision) to a special type of hospital (compulsory treatment with intensive supervision for patients who pose a particular danger to themselves and others) ... According to the administration of the dispensary, this patient was problematic - he urged other patients to escape, fought, swore, and was in conflict with the medical staff.

At the meeting, two huge orderlies, barely squeezing through the door, led into the hall an ordinary guy (the same patient), about 180 cm tall, of normal constitution; dressed in a white T-shirt, pajama pants and slippers, with a funny hat on his head (an oddity for which you can hardly be sent to a psychiatric hospital). During the process, this guy answered questions quite adequately, read the documents that were given to him for familiarization, clearly understood their meaning and significance, signed them, and generally behaved like an ordinary person. There was no talk of any riot at all.

When the judge retired to the deliberation room to make a decision, the doctor supervising the patient stood, hanging over my desk, and almost clapping his hands or jumping up and down, said: “He will be sent to Oryol, there is a special type of hospital! They beat such violent shockers there !!! Ha-ha! " The same doctor, by the way, approached my colleague from the back and whispered in his ear: "I'll bite you now ...". Perhaps this is all, you need to know about a person who heals human souls.

As a result, the court granted the dispensary's petition, and the guy, even at the moment the bracelets were closed on his wrist, did not show any signs of violence.

And all because the court does not possess sufficient knowledge to determine the degree of sanity, and there is no reason not to trust and doubt the medical report signed by this very "doctor" and his colleagues.

Well, don't give a damn, this guy is not the first or the last * sarcasm, if anything *

And the cheerful doctor and orderlies, exhausted by hard work, retired home.

One-to-one story, like in a book.

First, there are big doubts about who the big psycho is - a doctor or a patient.

Secondly, why treat an unwanted patient (if he really is), if you can get rid of him?

Thirdly, the system will always allow you to get rid of the unwanted: it is ruled by lazy people and tyrants. They come up with rules, set the limits of what is permissible and cram those around them. If someone doesn't fit in size - it's okay, they will cut off the excess.

“She sits at the very center of these wires and dreams that they embrace the whole world, acting as clearly and efficiently as a pocket watch with a glass back wall, about a place where the regime and schedule are unbreakable, and all patients who are not external are obedient. to its radiation, they are all Chronicles in wheelchairs with catheter tubes that protrude from each leg to drain excess fluid directly onto the floor. "