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Sometimes a Great Notion (Penguin Classics) |  | Author: Ken Kesey
Creator: Charles Bowden
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $17.00
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Rating:  127 reviews
Sales Rank: 94874
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Thus.
Pages: 736
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0143039865
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780143039860
ASIN: 0143039865
Publication Date: August 29, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what Charles Bowden calls "one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century." This wild-spirited tale tells of a bitter strike that rages through a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers. Out of the Stamper familys rivalries and betrayals Ken Kesey has crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 127
 The Great American Novel has already been written July 30, 2010
Jack Tripper (Chicago, IL)
I find it interesting that the initial reviews for Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion, in '64, were almost overwhelmingly negative. Perhaps the book was so ahead of its time, it took people a while to come to terms with just how wonderful and enveloping this book really is.
This is one of the few novels that actually held me in such awe that I had to stop reading for a few moments periodically, or I'd become too overwhelmed with emotion, due to the pure beauty in Kesey's prose. When he describes a "honker" flying past the river in the Redwoods, you can smell, hear, see, and feel all the sights and sounds surrounding you. It took almost no effort on my part, compared to contemporaries such as Pynchon, who's great in his own way, but at times can be mentally draining when trying to visualize just what the heck is going on.
I urge everyone to stick it out through the first 80-100 pages or so, as the constant POV shifting, sometimes in mid-paragraph, can take a little getting used to. But trust me, once you let go and just go with the flow, I guarantee you'll be absolutely immersed in the world of the Stamper clan, and will most likely never forget these characters. I know I never will. And I know I'll never read another novel that's affected me as much as this one has.
One of the best books ever.... July 28, 2010
Holly Golightly
I loved every minute of this book. Ken Kesey paints such a grand & richly textured picture with this one. Just brilliant, one of the best books I've ever read, definitely a favorite...
Review posted on The Literate Man [...] on July 8, 2010 July 8, 2010
Patrick J. OConnor (Miami, FL USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
That this greatest work of iconic, if underappreciated, American author, Ken Kesey, is not more widely read is one of the great tragedies of modern American literary culture. Kesey is generally best known for his groundbreaking 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and his role as the leader of the cross country- and LSD-tripping Merry Pranksters, whose exploits were famously chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Both are excellent works and well worth a read, especially if you have interest in either the Beat Generation (whose individualistic ideals and perspective Kesey largely inherited) or the drug-fueled love-fest of West Coast America in the 1960's and 70's. But any lover of great literature, particularly great American literature, and particularly particularly great male American literature, is doing himself a serious disservice by ignoring what is undoubtedly Kesey's greatest work, Sometimes a Great Notion.
The novel chronicles the Stamper family of Oregon, whose fiercely-independent and hard-scrabble life is played out among the teeming, danger-filled forests that they log and on the banks of the Wakonda River, whose waters have eroded the land about the Stamper family home to the point that the live on a virtual island. Like the setting, the characters are well-drawn and endlessly interesting, from the half-crazed patriarch, Henry Stamper, to the physically brutal but dependable eldest son, Hank Stamper, to the patient loyalty and creeping desire of Hank's wife, Vivian Stamper, to the softer intellectual person of Leland Stamper, the estranged half-brother of Hank who returns to the family logging business just as the Stampers stand off against powerful union interests, which demand that the family shut down operations to support an ongoing loggers strike.
But it is not just the compelling story of rugged individualism and fierce family loyalty that makes this perhaps the greatest novel ever written in American Literature (and we say perhaps only because we have not read them all). Kesey also innovates in style, using a technique of multiple first-person, stream of consciousness accounts of thought and action to bring the gritty characters to life. The points of view move from person to person furiously over the course of a single page and the reader can imagine the 72-hour amphetamine-fueled stints that Kesey admitted to in his writing of it. Whatever your criticisms of his technique, the effect is pure artistry--a symphony of action and emotion that builds to a crescendo that pits the Stamper family against all the arrayed forces of man and nature.
We have no problem placing this book at the top of our list of books for men and recommend it above all others for its incredible story and innovative style.
A Masterpiece May 23, 2010
Mr. Zog
I believe this to be the greatest American novel of the second half of the 20th century. Not an easy read, but immeasurably rewarding. A towering literary accomplishment. Make the time, take the time, and you will be the richer for it.
Amazing! April 3, 2010
Mia Bee (Oregon)
The first time I read this book, I would have given it one star for pretentiousness and completely confounding writing style. I did not understand the transition of thoughts between the brothers in the novel, and I was very impatient to find out why the heck there was a disembodied arm hanging outside the Stampers' house. I read about 80 pages in, and decided to quit. I left the book alone for about ten years.
I eventually heard more information about the book and decided to give it another try. I don't know if it was the additional education, practice reading, or life experience that expanded my ability to understand it, but this time, the book made a lot more sense, and I was immediately drawn into it.
Now, the book is centered in a small coastal logging town in Oregon, and myself being a native Oregonian who grew up in a near-coastal logging town, there were many parts of the book and its character that rang deep and true to my experience. These people are most definitely three-dimensional characters, the kinds of people you definitely would have known in the late 1950's, early 1960's when the book was written. Actually, you still meet people like this in Oregon, although the logging industry has fallen apart.
Kesey's style in this book is completely novel and intriguing. The family dynamics were touching (I could relate), and having worked out in the woods as a kid on my folks' timber farm, I could strongly imagine the view, the smells and tastes in scenes -- like when the men stopped to eat lunch while working in the woods.
If you don't understand this book the first time around, do yourself a favor: wait a few years and try it again. It is the number one most beautiful and touching book I've ever read.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 127
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