ABSTRACT
The author of the novels One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) and Sometimes A Great Notion (1964), Ken Kesey’s early experimentation with psychedelic drugs further fostered an already rebellious spirit, and these drugs became integral to his outlaw group, the Merry Pranksters, as well as to his followers nationally. On a local level, LSD in particular assumed a central role within group gatherings, most prominently in a series of events in 1965–1966 called the Acid Tests. Central to these events, rebellious acts defiant of social and political norms, was the ingestion of LSD, a virtual shared meal which helped broadly to define outlaw status, a rebellion further delineated through unique visual and audio expression. This essay uses Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) to locate Kesey and the Pranksters’ counterpart of actual feasting, the communal ingestion of LSD at the Acid Tests, was the climatic aspect of their outlaw status, an event celebrating their distance from society as well as an evangelical moment promising to enlarge their movement. Decades after the last cup of electric Kool-Aid was finished, the Grateful Dead would perpetuate the experience of the Acid Tests, the continued popularity of their concerts an argument for, and echo of, this particular type of outlaw ‘feast.’
