The Best Book On Hippies Money Can Buy

Tom Wolfe’s writing style is absolutely amazing. This is one of the few books I have read that I would actually consider a masterpiece. Before this book I never knew who Ken Kesey was, but now I feel as though I had met him personally and I had lived with him before. Although in the beginning it was a little hard for me to catch on the story after the first couple of chapters I was completely engrossed.
I have noticed that the way Tom Wolfe writes has a way to keep one “glued to the edge of their seat”. I often wondered if Tom Wolfe had actually been writing this book when he was with the pranksters, because the whole thing is very into the moment. I would never had believed there were such people in the world such as Ken Kesey had I not read this book. Kesey and all of the pranksters provide a great look into what life was like in the sixties. I always knew that there were hippies and drug users, but I never knew that the drugs were used for purposes besides getting high because one is addicted. Tom Wolfe presents drug using as a ritual in the sixties. He also describes what happened after one took drugs very well, and even went into his whole experience with taking LSD. He described things such as sunbursts behind his eyelids and that he felt that he was in control, so much that he felt like God.
After I finished reading this book I realized that novelists, artist, and poetry writers in the sixties believed that drugs such as acid, LSD, and morning glory seeds gave them creative flare and allowed them to, in Kesey’s words, “… be in the moment”. Even though by reading this book I am further pushed not to take drugs I can now fully understand how important of a role drugs were in the sixties. Thanks to this book the sixties has been made an easier decade for me to understand, in short it is the best book on hippies money can buy.