University of Virginia Library

'Acid Test' Begins Review Series

Wolfe Traces Psychedelic Age

By Charles K. Ribakoff II

Life as a critic is often an intense
drag, as nearly any critic will tell
you. Critics as a genre seem to
suffer from massive inferiority complexes.
Basically, the art form is
parasitic, lecherously clinging to
works that artists of usually far
greater talent produce. Further, no
one seems to take critics very seriously.
The most critically acclaimed
record of the past year,
"Song Circle" by Van Dyke Parks,
sold 6,000 copies in its first six
months, while such critical disasters
as the evergreen Monkees were selling
hundreds of thousands of records.
Some record companies have
taken to quoting put downs by
rock critic Richard Goldstein in
their advertising. The Beatles film
"Magical Mystery Tour" was a critical
disaster, yet it broke records for
rating on British television. I can
put down a book, like Leonard
Cohen's Beautiful Losers, but some
people will still read it and enjoy it.

As a result of being ignored,
critics can either contemptuously
disdain the peasants, consult their
analysts, and go on being parasitically
irrelevant, or stop and think
about what the hell they're doing.

I have been thinking about what
I'm doing. And since, I suppose,
there are somewhat more important
things to discuss with an analyst, I
have decided to take a somewhat
different approach to criticism. In
addition to being less parasitic, I
think it will be a bunch more
useful.

Relevant Reading

There are a series of excellent
documentaries and novels, books
that are extremely relevant to our
times, particularly to us as leaders
and members of a new society that
is rapidly forming around us. Uniformly,
these books abandon classical
English diction and style, and
owe a great deal to McLuansque
media for their communication.
They are not all easy reading, pleasant,
or even, I support critically,
Good Books, whatever that means.
But they are all relevant reading.
More important, many of these
books are relatively unknown.
Some are nearly underground with
fanatic cultist followings. These
books include The Magus by John
Fowles, The Crying of Lot 49 and
V. by Thomas Pynchon. Been
Down So Long It Looks Like Up
To Me by Richard Farina,
Daybreak by Joan Baez, and The
Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by
Tom Wolfe. I plan to review these
and others in the next several
weeks, not so much to judge them
as to bring them to your attention.
Some are better than others, but all
are worth reading and nearly
"must" reading.

Tom Wolfe's documentary, The
Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, is for
many reasons an ideal book to
begin this series with. Wolfe traces
the entire psychedelic revolution of
the mid sixties back to one man.
Ken Kesey, Kesey, author of One
Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, was
once considered, along with Joseph
Heller, one of the most promising
young writers. But Kesey, while
completing his first book, needed
some extra money, so he volunteered
to let a San Francisco hospital
test various new drugs on him.
One of these was the unknown
superdrug, LSD, then thought to
have a brilliant future as a
psychiatric aid in inducing an artificial
psychosis. This was in 1961.
Soon afterwards, Kesey and a group
of Stanford intellectuals moved into
a huge old house in the woods
near La Honda, California, near
Berkeley. It was from this vantage
point that he and his companions,
who called themselves the Merry
Pranksters, literally turned on the
world.

Merry Pranksters

In 1964, the Merry Pranksters
bought a 1939 International Harvester
school bus, painted it with a
a day-glo paint and, equipped with
an incredible sound system and
several gallons of LSD laced Orange
juice, drove it across the country to
New York City. To the Pranksters,
one was either On the Bus or Off
the Bus. Those On The Bus developed
almost a group mind, with
each person becoming an integral
but separate part of the group.
From this sprang some of the concepts
of communal living and
"doing your own thing" which media
made so trite 3 years later.

The 6000 mile freak out was
preserved by an impromptu movie
shot by the Pranksters on route.
And this was nearly four years
before Paul McCartney decided it
would be a smashing idea to buy an
old bus, paint it gay colors fill it
with suitably zonked-out people,
and make an impromptu film of
what went on called "Magical
Mystery Tour."

Communal Spirit

The Kool Aid Acid Tests happened
some time in 1965. They
were in the form of informal parties
held by the Pranksters at places like
the Filmore Auditorium in San
Francisco where strobes, a rock
band (generally the Grateful Dead)
and the Pranksters own refreshments,
Kool Aid flavored with
LSD, could be found. Anyone
could come, and everyone was welcome.
This communal spirit of
belonging being On The Bus
was one of the contributing factors
to the group love that begat the
wretched media hippie. And it was
nearly all Kesey's trip.

Kesey was, in short, a visionary.
The subsequent episodes of his
busts, escape to Mexico, recapture,
and the final Kool Aid Graduation
present him, perhaps a bit too
much, as the first drug martyr.

It's a fascinating story. But even
more fascinating than the story is
the way in which Tom Wolfe tells
it. All the stylistic nuances and
personal insights that made The
Pump House Gang so successful
make the Electric Kool Aid Acid
Test really fantastic.

Wolfe has managed to capture
not only the Prankster's story in
great detail. He has managed to
recapture and convey the mood and
environment of the times. Remember
that the mid-sixties scene
was a time of innocence and discovery.
It was before everyone got
chromosome mutation paranoia,
and before national media named
and destroyed the "hippie." It was
before the mafia started selling LSD
cut with speed and drove pure LSD
off the market. It was before drugs
were so common that grass was
common and you could buy LSD in
the first-year dorms, before there
were trite magic black light posters
at the Corner.

Ideal Style

Wolfe captures it all. His Electro-Pop
style, occasionally tiresome in
a series of short essays, is ideally
suited to writing a contemporary
documentary. Despite his obvious
infatuation with Kesey and the
other Merry Pranksters, Wolfe is
able to come amazingly close to
describing the whole Scene, and its
sources. And, unlike the innumerable
incorrect exposes that have
tried to explain the hippie movement
to the masses, Wolfe is not
writing this book to scandalize
God fearing menopausal matrons
from Westchester. Wolfe obviously
understands what went on, which
gives him an immediate advantage
over the other similar books I've
read. Further, there is an implicit
understanding in this book - Wolfe
seems to have gone along with them
and lived their trip to the point
where he, too, can get On The Bus.
He has written to explain, not to
expose. This is its essential difference,
the reason the book succeeds
where so many others have
failed miserably.

If you want to understand what
it is to be On The Bus, and how to
get there, The Electric Kool Aid
Acid Test is a good place to embark.