Aug. 11, 2011

cuckoo's nest

From The Novelist Portent by Johnny E. Mahaffey (author's profile)

Transcription

August 4, 2011

I came across some words I'd like to share from Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and to put them into proper context. If you're not familiar with his work, you need to understand that he took drugs to produce a state free of preconceptions. Something he felt was needed in order to create his novel.

"I studied inmates as they daily wove intricate and very accurate schizophrenic commentaries of the disaster of their environment, and had found that merely by ingesting a tiny portion I could toss word salad with the nuttiest of them, had discovered that if I plied my consciousness with enough of the proper chemicals, it was impossible to preconceive, and when preconception is fenced out, truth is liable to occur."

Talk about research! I don't think many writers would go check into the local loony-bin or submit to drug-induced prose for a book of all things.

This information has rooted into my own mind. Not the drugs, I refuse to ever go that route, but I am in a prison, which isn't so far from a loony-bin. So I feel that maybe I should put together a book like Cuckoo's Nest except based in a prison. I'm actually surrounded by a lot of schizophrenics. Material for a great narrative engulfs me. So, maybe...

I never was one to preconceive much anyway.

[drawing of a man standing around. A gust of wind blows off his baseball cap.]

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