Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test: Are We There Yet?

Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test tells the story of a charismatic leader, Ken Kesey, and the Pranksters who follow him. The story is one of pushing limits, opening new worlds, and creating an entirely new way of life, all of which is made easier by copious drug use. Kesey's mission is to spread this experience to all people. It is no great leap from this to see Kesey as the founder of a new sort of religion. Ken Kesey founded the Acid Head religion, and learned through it that power is only useful when it can be freely given and surrendered.

Kesey first experiences acid, or LSD, in a clinical setting. A friend tells him about a clinic in Menlo Park that is paying volunteers seventy-five dollars a day for testing. During this testing, when Kesey encounters LSD, he says that he was "in a realm of consciousness he had never dreamed of before." (40) Kesey begins then to share this experience with those close to him, and to open their eyes to what has thus far been unattainable to them. He moves to La Honda with select members of his Perry Lane community, among others, and this is the beginning of the Merry Pranksters.

At this stage, before Kesey and his group of followers can be called anything like a movement, the situation is closer to that of a leader and disciples. Kesey, having discovered LSD and thus a new way of seeing the world around him, feels a strong urge to share his discovery. The Pranksters crave his leadership and guidance, and thus, with the help of a synchronicity obtained while tripping, a sort of "informally but closely knit association, bound together by the new experience, whose nature the founder has revealed and interpreted," (128, Wach) is formed.

In a manner reminiscent of Jesus and his disciples, everyone who comes to La Honda is taken care of. In Tom Wolfe's book, little attention is paid to money and means of obtaining and distributing it, but everyone contributes what they can, and that everyone is taken care of. Certainly the money from Kesey's writing career is helpful, but anyone who has something to share, shares it. This lifestyle works wonderfully, as everyone has what they need when they need it, and no one has to be concerned with the dreariness of everyday life.

Ken Kesey claims that everyone should do their own "thing." If your thing is cooking, you cook. If your thing is kicking asses, you kick asses. He says that "Everybody is going to be who they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about." (73) Ken's thing appears to be leadership. However, he does not want to be regarded as the leader, or the one in charge, and thus he calls himself the non-navigator. Kesey "does not present rules of conduct. He presents his own life as an example for his followers," (129) according to Wolfe.

It almost seems as though even the universe at large regards Kesey as one who can give direction. Kesey decides to invite the Hell's Angels to visit and party, and improbable as the pairing of tree-hugging acid heads and rough and tumble bikers seems, no one gets hurt. In the very face of the improbability, friendships are formed that last for years to come. The Pranksters have only to hang out a sign that reads "The Merry Pranksters Welcome the Hell's Angels" and they appear like magic.

Kesey's power is not infinite, however. The Pranksters, full of success and momentum from their adventure with the Angels, hang out a sign reading "The Merry Pranksters Welcome the Beatles." They then sit back expectantly and wait for the Beatles, who are touring nearby, to arrive. The reader, thanks to Tom Wolfe's excellent craft, fully expects the Beatles to swing through the gate and join the party at La Honda. They never do, and whether this is because they never received an invitation or because they were uninterested is unknown.

As Kesey begins to gather more and more people around him, he becomes less content to sit about and take acid. He feels he needs to move onward, to the next step. This is Kesey's most driving urge. It is at this point that the acid tests begin to take place. Kesey has a vision of the entire world on a trip, partaking in this new experience. It is at this point in the book, when Kesey's followers consist of a large group of people, but not so large a group as to become a movement outside the reach his guidance, that the issue of control becomes evident.

As the Pranksters, the Hell's Angels, and Kesey move "futhur," they begin to see themselves as outside the rest of society. At a anti-war rally Kesey is asked to attend, Wolfe says that "from the cosmic vantage point the Pranksters had reached, there were so many reasons why this little charade was pathetic, they didn't know where to begin." (216) Ken's influence extends even to religious groups. After a weekend at a Unitarian conference, the youth begin to refer to Ken as the "Prophet Kesey." (193) Kesey resists this title, but the youth are adamant.

Shortly thereafter, Kesey has an experience on DMT which proves that there is something to the power and control which are attributed to him. Ken goes out onto the bridge, feeling that he is God and can control everything around him. He feels as though he "has all the Power in the world and can do what he wants," (196) and though he realizes that it was the drug causing most of these feelings, he also realizes that there was something more to the experience than a hallucination.

The Pranksters have discovered, through acid, "the supra-medium. . . CONTROL." (232) With the medium of the Acid Tests, the Pranksters can move a group of people on acid into new worlds in whatever way they feel at the moment, all the while filming and taping and performing. At one such event Kesey notices that by speeding up or slowing down the music, he can affect a similar response in the dancing crowd. Wolfe then says "Now let a man see what CONTROL is." (244) Kesey, again, feels as though he is God.

Kesey realizes that this thought pattern is partially dependant on the drugs, and he knows that there must be others in the crowd who feel similarly. In this he is utterly correct. Norman, circling the crowd with a video camera, comments that "the perfect state is reached and he realizes he is God." (261) He then begins to climb the scaffolding, thinking "Well, if I am God, then I can control this thing." (262) And he discovers that he can, until Ken Kesey projects a message on the wall which reads "Anyone who knows he is God Go up on stage," (262) and some other drugged, power-crazed acid head takes over control of the group.

When Kesey leaves for Mexico, it quickly becomes evident that much of the solidarity the Pranksters have comes directly from Kesey. The remaining Pranksters, determined to continue the work and thus have something to show Kesey when he returns, continue the Acid Tests, making each just a bit more spectacular and on the edge than the last. Babbs becomes the leader almost immediately, with Cassady and some other core Pranksters attempting to provide some direction as well. Just as is to be expected, this arrangement cannot last long.

The first problem appears to be that "Babbs gives too many orders - Kesey, the non-navigator, merely expressed a will and merely waited for it to move forward in the Group Mind." (267) Another turning point is when Pancho Pillow is turned away. Pancho had always been an outsider of sorts before, but before the Pranksters had "treated anyone who showed potential, anyone who was a potential brother, with generous solicitude." The Pranksters are beginning to be selective, and to crave power, and their goals are beginning to be outside their grasp.

After the dispute over the Electric Kool-Aid Acid test, when acid was given to unknowing partygoers (whether or not this was intentional), the group splits in half. One group is lead by Babbs, and another by Cassady. The acid tests continue, but the group does not return to solidarity until Kesey's return from Mexico. It takes his charisma and vision to hold together even the most synchronized of people.

Even the swirling rush of power associated with the Acid Tests is not enough for Kesey. Kesey still feels as though he must go "futhur." Kesey begins to talk, on his return from Mexico, of holding an Acid Test Graduation. Kesey feels, and says on television, that "we've reached a certain point where we're not moving anymore, we're not creating anymore, and that's why we've got to move on to the next step." (379) This plan consists of internalizing the acid experience and living it all the time, not just while on a trip.

Kesey sees it as useless to keep opening up the door in his mind, going through into the new and exciting world of acid, and then going back through the door and closing it behind him. He says that he and the Pranksters must "either emerge as Superheroes, closing the door behind them and soaring through the hole in the sapling sky, or just lollygag in the loop-the-loop of the lag." (323) Although it is uncertain how this goal is to obtained, the goal is set out clearly. The Pranksters must go beyond acid and "make this thing permanent inside you forever." (324)

During the interim, while Kesey is attempting to figure out precisely what is next, it becomes obvious that there is a power struggle at play in the Haight-Ashbury. The Prankster lifestyle has become so popular and widespread that it is not something Ken can control anymore. It is simply a movement which he happens to have started and has now become merely a part of. The Acid movement has now split into two camps: Kesey's world of Day-Glo and Acid Tests, and Leary's eastern, meditative view of the acid experience.

There are many who disagree with Kesey's plan to go "beyond acid." Acid has become a major source of income for many in the area, and has become a tool for those who wish for power and control. Kesey is suggesting that people go without acid and attempt to obtain the lifestyle on their own. This suggestion is frightening to those outside Kesey's camp and still within the movement. It is because of this that the Acid Test Graduation has to be held in the Calliope garage, and not in a larger hall.

After the anticlimactic Acid Test Graduation, Kesey and the Pranksters for a time attempt to continue as they have been, playing music, experimenting with mixed media, and simply being together. However, those in the Haight-Ashbury and elsewhere who opposed Ken's end-of-acid movement have taken power. It comes upon Kesey slowly that he has no power anymore, that he has lost that indefinable thing he once called "control." At the Barn, in Scotts Valley, Kesey and Babbs finally admit that "We Blew It." (411)

Ken Kesey has gone from one man experimenting with acid to a "Prophet" with hundreds of followers in the course of a year or so. He "had not taught or preached. Rather, he had created an experience."(192) However, after reaching a pinnacle of power, the control begins to slip slowly between Kesey's fingers. This is due, in large part, to Kesey's inability to lead his followers onward to the "next step" that he insists must exist. However, the movement, for it has become a movement now, lives on. It may even be for the best because, as Kesey himself says, "You prove your point, and then you have 2,000 years of war." (192)

Though power is a wondrous thing for those who have the power, it is often destructive and confining to those held in the sway of a great leader, even one who believes he or she is doing what is right. Kesey explores this in his book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, through both Nurse Ratched and the Combine. What Kesey realizes is that though it is good to have power and to create change, the power must be shared and it must be freely given. It is only in this way that any progress can be made, that we can move "furthur."