The Truth Behind Cuckoo's Nests--Ken Kesey

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 840

This post nominally belongs in the Blank and Empty Things thread, but barely. 

Many years ago a friend at PEN/Faulkner let me impersonate an usher at a Ken Kesey evening so that I could be the last person to see the man before he disappeared into the night.  He was lovely and charming and entertained the evening, winding up signing books at the end.  What I wanted from the man was to hear him recite the nursery rhyme that formed the title of his first book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  He wrote it in 1962, an odd book coming from an odd man—Kesey had been in academia on the high-end at Stanford, buddying up with Larry McMurtry and Robert Stone and getting instruction from Stegner and Cowley; he became something different, a figure with literary studs while bouncing between the beats and the rad ‘60’s.  Anyway I read the book when I was young and liked it a lot, and still do.

So I approached the tired Kesey and made my request.  He was amused that I only wanted to hear him recite something rather than sign a book—honestly I just wanted to take the memory with me into the future.  And as a matter of fact, I had/have a nice first edition of the thing but didn’t have it that day, forgetting it at home, or not thinking to take it with me.  Just before leaving for the event, I stopped at Olsson’s Books in Georgetown and bought a paperback copy of OFOTCN, sticking it in my back pocket just in case.

So.  Kesey was amused, and asked if I’d like a copy of his new kid’s book, Little Tricker the Squirrel…. (published 1991), from which he had just done a very animated reading.  He pulled a copy out of his sack, opened a gold magic marker, and signed the book IN GIANT LETTERS  to my very-soon-to-be-wife Patti Digh, “Dear Patti, sometimes ink can be a great potion” (alluding to his classic book, Sometimes a Great Notion).  Fabulous.  Kesey then started to talk about the fairy tale and cuckoos and what a nasty habit they had of laying their eyes in other birds’ nest to have their young be “raised by strangers in a strange land”.  He recited the version he had heard from his grandmother.

 I finally brought out my paperback copy of his book, and he signed it with the final flourish from his version of the old poem.  The man was very gracious.     

 

Another version goes like this:

 

"Tingle, Tingle, Tangle Toes
She's a good fisherman
Catches hens, puts'em inna pens
Wier blier, limber lock
Three geese inna flock
One flew east, One flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
O-U-T spells out
Goose swoops down and plucks you out.”

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Thanks for sharing this great story!