One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A classic battle royale between the patients at a mental institution and the nurse who oversees them. Grappling with themes of good and evil, this is a narrative that will leave readers checking in with themselves as they inevitably root for the antics of Randle Patrick McMurphy.

Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched

A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results.

With One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey created a work without precedent in American literature, a novel at once comic and tragic that probes the nature of madness and sanity, authority and vitality. Greeted by unanimous acclaim when it was first published, the book has become and enduring favorite of readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140043129
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/25/1977
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.62(h) x 0.58(d)
Lexile:	1040L (what's this?)

About the Author

Ken Kesey was born in 1935 and grew up in Oregon. His books include Sometimes a Great Notion, Kesey's Garage Sale, Demon Box, Sailor Song, and Last Go Round (with Ken Babbs). He passed away on November 10, 2001.

Read an Excerpt

Sketches

Psychedelic sixties. God knows whatever that means it certainly meant far more than drugs, though drugs still work as a pretty good handle to the phenomena.
Eight o'clock every Tuesday morning I showed up at the vet's hospital in Menlo Park, ready to roll. The doctor deposited me in a little room on his ward, dealt me a couple of pills or a shot or a little glass of bitter juice, then locked the door. He checked back every forty minutes to see if I was still alive, took some tests, asked some questions, left again. The rest of the time I spent studying the inside of my forehead, or looking out the little window in the door. It was six inches wide and eight inches high, and it had heavy chicken wire inside the glass.

You get your visions through whatever gate you're granted.

Patients straggled by in the hall outside, their faces all ghastly confessions. Sometimes I looked at them and sometimes they looked at me. but rarely did we look at one another. It was too naked and painful. More was revealed in a human face than a human being can bear, face-to-face.

Sometimes the nurse came by and checked on me. Her face was different. It was painful business, but not naked. This was not a person you could allow yourself to be naked in front of.

Six months or so later I had finished the drug experiments and applied for a job. I was taken on as a nurse's aide, in the same ward, with the same doctor, under the same nurse—and you must understand we're talking about a huge hospital here! It was weird.

But, as I said, it was the sixties.

Those faces were still there, still painfully naked. To ward them off my case I very prudently took to carrying around a little notebook, to scribble notes. I got a lot of compliments from nurses: "Good for you, Mr. Kesey. That's the spirit. Get to know these men."

I also scribbled faces. No, that's not correct. As I prowl through this stack of sketches I can see that these faces bored their way behind my forehead and scribbled themselves. I just held the pen and waited for the magic to happen.

This was, after all, the sixties.

Ken Kesey

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
by .
Copyright © 1977 Ken Kesey.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Sketches by Ken Kesey   vii
Introduction by Robert Faggen   ix

Part One   1
Part Two  127
Part Three  173
Part Four   223

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A glittering parable of good and evil." —The New York Times Book Review

"A roar of protest against middlebrow society’s Rules and the Rulers who enforce them." —Time

Editorial Reviews

"A work of genuine literary merit . . . What Mr. Kesey has done in his unusual novel is to transform the plight of a ward of inmates in a mental hospital into a glittering parable of good and evil."
—The New York Times Book Review

"[A] brilliant first novel . . . a strong, warm story about the nature of human good and evil . . . Keysey has made his book a roar of protest against middlebrow society's Rules and the invisible Rulers who enforce them."
—Time

"The final triumph of these men at the cost of a terrifying sacrifice should send chills down any reader's back. . . . This novel's scenes have the liveliness of a motion picture."
—The Washington Post

"An outstanding book . . . [Kesey's] characters are original and real. . . . This is a tirade against the increasing controls over man and his mind, yet the author never gets on a soap box. Nor does he forget that there is a thin line between tragedy and comedy."
—Houston Chronicle 

From the Publisher

A glittering parable of good and evil.”

New York Times Book Review

[Kesey’s] book is a strong, warm story about the nature of human good and evil...A roar of protest against middlebrow society's rule and the invisible rulers who enforce them.”

Time

Mr. Kesey has created a world that is convincing, alive, and glowing within its own boundaries…His is a large, robust talent, and he has written a large, robust book.”

Saturday Review

You feel this book along your spine.”

Kansas City Star