ken kesey,英语的简介

ken kesey,英语的简介
ken kesey,英语的简介

ken kesey,英语的简介
肯·克西（Ken Kesey）,美国著名小说家,肯·克西自幼体格强壮,喜好运动,尤擅长摔跤,为此获奖学金进入俄勒冈大学学习新闻学.1959年到斯坦福大学攻读写作学位,自愿参加了政府在一所医院的毒品实验项目,1963年基于这一体验出版了长篇小说《飞越疯人院》而一举成名.他还在好莱坞影片中出演过次要角色.1990年任教于俄勒冈大学,直至去世.他被称为嬉皮时代的催生者和见证人,一位严肃的小说家,可以同菲力普·罗思和约瑟夫·海勒相提并论.正如1997年垮掉一代宗师金斯堡的离世,肯·克西的去世所留下的空白也无人可以填补.

American writer, who gained world fame with his novel ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1962, filmed 1975). Kesey became in the 1960s a counterculture hero and a guru of psychedelic drugs with Timothy ...

全部展开

American writer, who gained world fame with his novel ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1962, filmed 1975). Kesey became in the 1960s a counterculture hero and a guru of psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary. Kesey has been called the Pied Piper who changed the beat generation into the hippie movement.
"I think McMurphy knew better than we did that our tough looks were all show, because he still wasn't able to get a real laugh out of anybody. Maybe he couldn't understand why we weren't able to laugh yet, but he knew you can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things. In fact, he worked so hard of pointing out the funny side of things that I was wondering a little if maybe he was blind to the other side, if maybe he wasn't able to see what it was that parched laughter deep inside your stomach." (from One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest)
Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and brought up in Eugene, Oregon. His father worked in the creamery business, in which he was eventually successful after founding the Eugene Farmers Cooperative. Kesey spent his early years hunting, fishing, swimming; he learned to box and wrestle, and he was a star football player. He studied at the University of Oregon, where he acted in college plays. On graduating he won a scholarship to Stanford University. Kesey soon dropped out and joined the counterculture movement. In 1956 he married his school sweetheart, Faye Haxby. He began experimenting with drugs and wrote an unpublished novel, ZOO, about the beatniks of the North Beach community in San Francisco. Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) described Kesey and his friends, called the Merry Pranksters, as they travelled the country and used all kinds of hallucinogens. Wolfe compared somewhat mockingly Kesey to the figures of the world's great religions. Their bus, called Further - actually written "Furthur" on the vehicle - was painted in Day-Glo colors. In California Kesey's friends served LSD-laced Kool-Aid to members of their parties.
At a Veterans Administration hospital in Menlo Park, California, Kesey was paid as a volunteer experimental subject, taking mind-altering drugs and reporting their effects. These experiences as an aide at a psychiatric hospital and LSD sessions formed the background for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which was set in a mental hospital. While writing the work, Kesey took peyote. The story is narrated by Chief Bromden, who is six feet, eight inches tall, a half-American Indian. He lets people think he is a deaf mute. Into his world there enters the petty criminal and prankster Randall Patrick McMurphy with his efforts to change the bureaucratic system of a mental hospital. The mental ward is ruled by Big Nurse Ratched. McMurphy is an involuntary and anarchic patient - the others are there more or less voluntarily. 'My name is McMurphy, buddies. R.P. McMurphy, and I'm gambling fool.' He winks and sings a little piece of song: '"...and whenever I meet with a deck a cards I lays... my money... down."' and laughs again. (from One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest) Bromden is a paranoid schizophrenic and through his consciousness the conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy becomes a battle of good and evil. McMurphy encourages the Acutes to take charge of their lives but becomes a victim of the oppressive system. McMurphy plans to escape but after a wild party he is given a frontal lobotomy. Bromden smothers him with a pillow and escapes towards Canada. The book suggests that the really dangerous mental cases are those in positions of authority.
The film adaptation of the book gained a huge success. Kirk Douglas had bought the right to Kesey's novel; he played the role of McMurphy on Broadway in an adaptation by Dale Wasserman. It ran for 82 performances at the Cort Theater during the 1963-64 season. When he failed to interest a studio in the project, he finally turned the package over to his son Michael. Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman refused the role. The film was made in one wing of the Oregon State Hospital. Several actual patients of the hospital played extras. The major change was that while the novel was narrated by Chief Bromden, the film was shot more objectively - Bromden is also the only patient who escapes the hospital. "But Forman does his best to minimize Kesey's misogynist undertones. By making all the characters more fully rounded, he reduces the polarization of good and evil that leaves the novel open to these charges, avoiding the novel's tendency to turn McMurphy into a hero or Christ figure." (from Novels into Film by John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh, 1997) When the film won five Academy Awards, Kesey was barely mentioned during the award ceremonies, and he made known his unhappiness with the film. He did not like Jack Nicholson, or the script, and sued the producers.
"This guy's scamp who knows he's irresistible to women and, in reality, he expects Nurse Ratched to be seduced by him... This is his tragic flaw. This is why he ultimately fails. I discussed this with Louise - I discussed it only with her. That's what I felt was actually happening with that character. It was one long, unsuccessful seduction which the guy was so pathologically sure of." (Jack Nicholson about McMurphy in Jack Nicholson, the Unauthorised Biography by Barbara & Scott Siegel, 1990)
Kesey's next novel, SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION appeared two years later and was also made into a film, this time directed by Paul Newman. The story was set in a logging community and centered on two brothers and their bitter rivalry in the family. Hank Stamper is a raw and aggressive man of nature, and his opponent is Draeger, a union official attempting to force local loggers into conformity. Hank's half-brother, the introspective Lee, chooses to retreat into intellectualism instead of action. After the work, Kesey gave up publishing novels. He formed a band of 'Merrie Pranksters', set up a commune in La Honda, California, bought an old school bus, and toured America and Mexico with his friends, among them Neal Cassady, Kerouac's travel companion.
In 1965 Kesey was arrested for possession of marijuana. He fled to Mexico, where he faked an unconvincing suicide and then returned to the United States, serving a five-month prison sentence at the San Mateo County Jail. After this tumultuous period he settled down with his wife to raise their four children, and taught a graduate writing seminar at the University of Oregon. In the early 1970s Kesey returned to writing and published KESEY'S GARAGE SALE (1973). His later works include the children's book LITTLE TRICKER THE SQUIRREL MEETS BIG DOUBLE THE BEAR (1990) and SAILOR SONG (1992), a futuristic tale about an Alaskan fishing village and Hollywood film crew. LAST GO AROUND (1994), Kesey's last book, was an account of a famous Oregon rodeo written in the form of pulp fiction. Kesey died of complications after surgery for liver cancer on November 10, 2001 in Eugene, Oregon.

收起

Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado to dairy farmers Frederick A. Kesey and Geneva Smith.[3] In 1946, the family moved to Springfield, Oregon.[4] Kesey was a champion wrestler in both high school...

全部展开

Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado to dairy farmers Frederick A. Kesey and Geneva Smith.[3] In 1946, the family moved to Springfield, Oregon.[4] Kesey was a champion wrestler in both high school and college in the 174 pound weight division, and he almost qualified to be on the Olympic team until a serious shoulder injury stopped his wrestling career. He graduated from Springfield High School in 1953.[4] An avid reader and filmgoer, the young Kesey took John Wayne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Zane Grey as his models (later naming a son Zane) and toyed with magic, ventriloquism, and hypnotism.[5]
In 1956, while attending college at the University of Oregon in neighboring Eugene, Kesey eloped with his high-school sweetheart, Norma "Faye" Haxby, whom he had met in seventh grade.[4] They had three children, Jed, Zane, and Shannon; Kesey had another child, Sunshine, in 1966 with fellow Merry Prankster Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams.[6] His son Jed died in a car accident in 1984.[7]
Kesey attended the University of Oregon's School of Journalism, where he received a degree in speech and communication in 1957, where he was also a brother of Beta Theta Pi. He was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship in 1958 to enroll in the creative writing program at Stanford University, which he did the following year.[4] While at Stanford, he studied under Wallace Stegner and began the manuscript that would become One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

收起