The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Dear Mr. Tom Wolfe,

I thoroughly enjoyed your novel, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” as it was very well written. Every word on the page I read I could clearly picture in my head what was going on, it was like no other book I have read. Your novel had a very strange plot, dealing with adults experimenting with drugs, but more specifically acid.

Your book first attracted me, because you inspired the novel “On the Road” by Jack Karouac, as the plot of your novel related to Jack Karouac’s work as it was about an adventure literally on the road. The journey had been partaken by Kesey and his gang of Pranksters. The story begins with Kesey getting out of jail and the extensive journey then begins with him and his friends going on a bus across the country. The bus they traveled in was a DayGlo a painted bus called the “Furthur”.

This was one of my favorite quotes from the 3rd chapter, “Mountain Girl fishes around in the debris over beside a bunch of theatre seats and gets the shirt, a brown buckskin shirt with an open neck and red leather lacings. Kesey takes off the shirt he has on. He has huge latissimi dorsi muscles making his upper back fan out like manta-ray wings.” I love this quote because it catches your attention and describes something so simple, in a more detailed and explicit way.

In the 9th chapter, the “Crypt Trip”, Kesey and his gang of Pranksters find themselves at Leary’s house a drug addict that was experimenting with acid on three-day trip. It is a very funny chapter as everything described about the house is very interesting. “When they got in sight of the great gingerbread mansion itself, all towers and turrets and jigsaw shingles, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt started throwing green smoke bombs off the top of the bus, great booms and blooms of green smoke exploding off the sides of the bus.” This quote describes in such perfect detail, the reader can imagine Sandy throwing the smoke bombs at the bus and the big explosion that they would cause.

Near the end of the novel, is “The Graduation”, I found a quote which is a brief description of the “The Danger of LSD”. The graduation is pretty much a conclusion of all the things that occurred on Kesey’s adventure, including all the weird events and concoctions they tried over their huge adventure. “-coming on in big letters on the screen of the monitor sets in the studio, with a drawing of three sugar cubes under it…the symbol of LSD, of course, like four XXXX’S for whiskey…and the voice over”… (and author Ken Kesey…). This a final quick detailed description of the view of LSD in the eyes of Kesey.

I really enjoyed the novel, thank you.

Sincerely, Michael Dawson