Ken Kesey and the Style of Murder Most Foul

[Martin Blank]

 The last part of Ken Kesey's short story about the death of Neal Cassady. (Dean Moriarty in On the Road and Houlihan in the story. Kesey is Deboree Devlin.) The story is entitled The Day After Superman Died and appeared in Esquire in 1982,  It concerns Derboree learning about Houlihan's death in Mexcico and his reaction. I think Murder Most Foul is closer to Kesey's piece in style and intent than American Pie or We Didn't Start the Fire. Here's the excerpt (longish)

[Martin Blank]

sorry about that.

 

“What did she say he was doing out there on the railroad tracks? Counting?”

“The ties,” Blondboy answers. “Counting the ties between Puerto Sancto and the next village. Thirty miles away. Counting the railroad ties. They got him doped up and dared him and he did it, didn’t he, hee hee?”

“Houlihan,” says Blackbeard’s voice, gentler. “The great Houlihan. Done in by downers and a dare.” Blackbeard sounded honestly grieved, and Deboree found himself suddenly liking him. "I can’t believe it . . .”

“Don’t let it bother you, bro. He was fried, you know? Gangrened. But c’mere and check this. I bet this makes you take that wienie outta your mouth . . .”

Deboree tries to lift his eyes open, but the tunnel is twining too fast. Let it close, he tells himself happily. Who’s afraid of the dark now? Houlihan wasn’t merely making noise—he was counting. He didn’t lose it. We didn’t lose it. We were all counting.

The dark space about him is suddenly filled with faces, winking off and on. Deboree watches them twinkle, feeling warm and befriended, equally fond of all the countenances, those close, those far, those known, those never met, those dead, those never dead. Hello faces. Come back. Come on back all of you even LBJ with your Texas cheeks eroded by compromises come back. Khrushchev, fearless beyond peasant ignorance, healthy beside Eisenhower, come back both of you. James Dean all picked apart and Tab Hunter all put together, Michael Rennie in your silver suit the day the earth stood still for peace, come back all of you.

Now go away and leave me.

Now come back.

Come back Vaughn Monroe, Ethel Waters, Krazy Kat, Lou Costello, Harpo Marx, Adlai Stevenson, Ernest Hemingway, Herbert Hoover, Harry Belafonte, Timothy Leary, Ron Boise, Jerry Lee Lewis, Lee Harvey Oswald, Chou En-lai, Ludwig Erhard, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Mandy Rice-Davies, General Curtis LeMay and Gordon Cooper, John O’Hara and Liz Taylor, Estes Kefauver and Governor Scranton, The Invisible Man and The Lonely Crowd, The True Believer and The Emerging Nations, the Hungarian Freedom Fighters, Elsa Maxwell, Dinah Washington, Jean Cocteau, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Jimmy Hatlo, Aldous Huxley, Edith Piaf, Zasu Pitts, Seymour Glass, Big Daddy Nord, Grandma Whittier, Grandpa Deboree, Pretty Boy Floyd, Big Boy Williams, Boyo Behan, Mickey Rooney, Mickey Mantle, Mickey McGee, Mickey Mouse, come back, go away, come on back.

That summer sweet Frisco with flowers in your hair come back. Now go away.

Cleaver, come back. Abbie, come back. And you that never left come back anew, Joan Baez, Bob Kaufmann, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gordon Lish, Gordon Fraser, Gregory Corso, Ira Sandperl, Fritz Peris, swine pearls and even you black bus Charlie Manson asshole come back afresh you know now go away now come back.

We are being summoned. We get a reprieve, not just rebop. He wasn’t just riffing; he was counting. Appear and testify.

Young Cassius Clay.

Young Mailer.

Young Miller.

Young Jack Kerouac before you fractured your football career at Columbia and popped your hernia in Esquire. Young Sandy without your credit card bare. Young Devlin. Young Dylan. Young Lennon. Young lovers wherever you are. Come back and remember and go away and come back.

Attendance mandatory but not required.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

...Standing O...!

 

[David Andrews]

This is known as the elegiac style, with cataloguing.

[W. Niederhut]

BTW, on the subject of my fellow Denver East High alumnus Neal Cassidy, (and Ken Kesey) I'm posting the most fascinating rock 'n roll interview I've ever heard anywhere.

It's Jerry Garcia, late in life, talking about his life altering experiences with Ken Kesey's electric kool-aid acid tests.

I find this especially interesting in light of the recent psychiatric research with hallucinogens at Johns Hopkins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVkkbJ_KI2Y

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by W. Niederhut

[Martin Blank]

sorry about the poet and thanks to who fixed it.

 

The headline should read: Ken Kesey and style in Murder Most Foul

 

If anyone can fix it

[Ron Bulman]

31 minutes ago, Martin Blank said:

sorry about the poet and thanks to who fixed it.

 

The headline should read: Ken Kesey and style in Murder Most Foul

 

If anyone can fix it

I think only you can, because I've messed up one before.  But I don't remember what I did to correct it at the moment.

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

BTW, on the subject of my fellow Denver East High alumnus Neal Cassidy, (and Ken Kesey) I'm posting the most fascinating rock 'n roll interview I've ever heard anywhere.

It's Jerry Garcia, late in life, talking about his life altering experiences with Ken Kesey's electric kool-aid acid tests.

I find this especially interesting in light of the recent psychiatric research with hallucinogens at Johns Hopkins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVkkbJ_KI2Y

 

As a freshman at Harvard on the highway (Tarrant County Junior College) in Sociology, given a list of books to choose from to report on I chose Electric Kool-aid Acid Test.  For someone who had tried marijuana a few times it was pretty eye opening.  The Merry Prankster's were wild but what the hell's angels did to one girl was pretty sick.

[Kirk Gallaway]

I had just gotten my driver license. On a number of times, we'd go out through La Honda on highway 84 to the beach in San Gregorio and passed by the house  with  the painted buses where the Merry Pranksters were. We were just starting to get high on pot, and we just thought that there were a "bunch of heads" there.

Later I saw Ken Kesey at a community college in...... 1971? He looked vital and in real good shape. I had read Electric Kool Aid Acid Test around 1970. After he spoke, there was a group of people asking him questions.  Tom Wolfe  had come out from the East Coast specifically to use the Merry Pranksters as subject matter for his book. I asked Kesey  a question I had always wanted to ask him after reading the book. "During this time,wasn't Tom Wolfe a bit of a thorn in your side?" And he said "No we just tripped over him occasionally" with a little glee in his eyes.

[Jeanie Dean]

Kudos to you Martin Black, Dylan does share Kesey's style, a laconic off-the-cuff, out-of-the-side-of-the-mouth, off-hand, multiple-conversations-at-once manner of speaking.  Kesey's writing in this piece is beautiful.  Yes, both works have in common this litany of icons in a postmodern dirge of remembrance for the dead. And Dylan and Kesey both call up emblems of collective presence in time. 

I venture to suggest that the mosaic of things and people Kesey summons and releases are more unified and recognized as emblems of a particular time or attitude in culture, whereas Dylan's litany is less easily located.   Billy Joel's "Start the Fire" is comparable too to Kesey's and Dylan's litanizing.   Billy Joel's list is particularly predictable and reliable as everybody's-top-ten-list-of-everything-we-like-to-recall-about-the-late-20th-century; his list fails to surprise. Dylan does intrigue and surprise us with his uncanny interjections. He calls on songs from the 1920s to the the 21st century, with "Dumbarton's Drums" from another century,  though we are not sure which one.  

Kesey's and Billy Joel's mantras are recognizable,  but it is hard to situate Dylan's allusions in time, maybe place, or theme or style. Dylan reconfigures well known cliches and figures-of-speech from various eras and contexts and re-images on a whole new screen.  In this respect Dylan is not like Kesey.  With Kesey we know those heroes and icons, know what they represent and we know how they fit together. With Dylan we don't easily discern how the many allusions connect. Do they fit together at all? Perhaps its too soon.  Ultimately the unity or themes that connects Dylan's mosaic is not so obvious; its not a clear shot to an identifiable target.

This mystification is like the infinite ambiguity and perfection of Dylans' most splendid and universally understood line, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."   We know what it is, but we can't say it precisely. 

In "Murder Most Foul," Dylan seems to be saying look at these other things, instead of the "Kennedy blues."  By the way did you know the blues album  Can't Keep from Crying was immediately released in 1964 by ten Blues artist to honor JFK. 

Is Dylan saying look away from JFK and the JFK problem? Why is he saying look away from JFK?  What are those other allusions telling as a message or as a unity?  Is it something idiosyncratic and unique to Dylan's experience?  Possibly.    

 Kesey's story is indeed a strong comparison to Dylan's newest song.  Both works remember the dead and summon icons of our collective cultural heritage in a unique  sideways and off-hand voice that expresses grief without saying so.  

 

[Jeanie Dean]

Kudos to you Martin Black, Dylan does share Kesey's style, a laconic off-the-cuff, out-of-the-side-of-the-mouth, off-hand, multiple-conversations-at-once manner of speaking.  Kesey's writing in this piece is beautiful.  Yes, both works have in common this litany of icons in a postmodern dirge of remembrance for the dead. And Dylan and Kesey both call up emblems of collective presence in time. 

I venture to suggest that the mosaic of things and people Kesey summons and releases are more unified and recognized as emblems of a particular time or attitude in culture, whereas Dylan's litany is less easily located.   Billy Joel's "Start the Fire" is comparable too to Kesey's and Dylan's litanizing.   Billy Joel's list is particularly predictable and reliable as everybody's-top-ten-list-of-everything-we-like-to-recall-about-the-late-20th-century; his list fails to surprise. Dylan does intrigue and surprise us with his uncanny interjections. He calls on songs from the 1920s to the the 21st century, with "Dumbarton's Drums" from another century,  though we are not sure which one.  

Kesey's and Billy Joel's mantras are recognizable,  but it is hard to situate Dylan's allusions in time, maybe place, or theme or style. Dylan reconfigures well known cliches and figures-of-speech from various eras and contexts and re-images on a whole new screen.  In this respect Dylan is not like Kesey.  With Kesey we know those heroes and icons, know what they represent and we know how they fit together. With Dylan we don't easily discern how the many allusions connect. Do they fit together at all? Perhaps its too soon.  Ultimately the unity or themes that connects Dylan's mosaic is not so obvious; its not a clear shot to an identifiable target.

This mystification is like the infinite ambiguity and perfection of Dylans' most splendid and universally understood line, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."   We know what it is, but we can't say it precisely. 

In "Murder Most Foul," Dylan seems to be saying look at these other things, instead of the "Kennedy blues."  By the way did you know the blues album  Can't Keep from Crying was immediately released in 1964 by ten Blues artist to honor JFK. 

Is Dylan saying look away from JFK and the JFK problem? Why is he saying look away from JFK?  What are those other allusions telling as a message or as a unity?  Is it something idiosyncratic and unique to Dylan's experience?  Possibly.    

 Kesey's story is indeed a strong comparison to Dylan's newest song.  Both works remember the dead and summon icons of our collective cultural heritage in a unique  sideways and off-hand voice that expresses grief without saying so.  

 

[Jeanie Dean]

What is Kesey summoning in this passage? He calls up our better selves and perhaps our denied selves like the Hungarian resistance.  He calls for the promise of youth,  the joy of youth and particularly joy of youth in the 1950-60s, he calls on spent youth and the uncompleted life.  Finally Kesey reminds us of then fledgling heroes of the day: Mailer, Miller and Clay, Dylan and Lennon; now august giants of their time.  However Dylan's cache of cataloging in "Murder Most Foul" is not directly named. 

[Martin Blank]

there's probably some Ken Nordine in there somewhere too.

[Kirk Gallaway]

Martin, I assume maybe you  saw this.This is a British documentary on Kesey  to celebrate his coming to the the U.K. in 1999. There is a specific reference Kesey makes to the Kennedy Assassination around 9:30, that a lot of people here would like to see. Hunter Thompson brags of bringing the Hell's Angels to the Merry Pranksters, which didn't go that well,  Allen Ginsberg, and the subject, Neil Cassidy doing his usual tweaking..

 

William, I liked the interview with Garcia. It looks like he was on his last leg, maybe the last couple of years.  I bought my first Martin 12 string from Guitars Unlimited in Menlo Park, which is right next to Palo Alto. Garcia had taught guitar there probably 1-2 years earlier. I knew the music scene he came up in. I knew a woman student of his. I've seen Jerry do small club gigs with Dave Grisman, Tom Fogerty and Merle Saunders in Palo Alto in the 70's in addition to a number of Dead concerts at the Fillmore, Oakland and and once in Jamaica.

 

 

Edited April 18, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[Martin Blank]

Here's Kesey on the assassination as it  happened and affected him:

 

The Loss of Innocence 

Ken Kesey

I was back in New York with my wife and family for the opening of "Cuckoo's Nest" on Broadway. I had just finished my second novel and I wasn't working on anything else; I was waiting for whatever came up to come up. After the opening, my wife and family flew back, and I drove back with this friend of mine, George Walker, and another guy that we sprung from the nuthouse. 

And we were about half a day out of New York, headed west and eating peyote. It makes the driving interesting, especially the late fall in that northern part of America. We were in Pennsylvania when the news began to come in over the radio that the president had been shot. And I never paid much attention to politics,but as we drove, and the news came in over that car radio, and we stopped in at service stations and Howard Johnaon's and llittle fast food places across the United States, a really profound thing happened to all of us. We liked the feeling of the country and the look of the country and the look of the people. It was like a light was shining and everything else was foggy. 

As we drove farther across, the weather began to get worse, and the information was coming in steadily all the time. At first he was wounded, and they wouldn't say whether he was dead, and then you hear about Officer Tippet being killed, and then you hear about Oswald, and by that time we were in Michigan. So all the way across the United States, we're involved in this, all these characters like old radio-fiction characters in my mind. We pulled into Jackson Hole, Wyo., as it was sort of finally coming to its end. It was blizzarding, and during that afternoon, the road finally was just too snowy to go on anymore. We pulled up and stopped at a closed-down station, a big red, white and blue Chevron. Three days on peyote and national grief, and looking up in the sky in this blizzard coming down, and then this red, white and blue Chevron, and I thought, "This is no accident. This is something very, very special and deep."

 As we drove farther across, the weather began to get worse, and the information was coming in steadily all the time. At first he was wounded, and they wouldn't say whether he was dead, and then you hear about Officer Tippet being killed, and then you hear about Oswald, and by that time we were in Michigan. So all the way across the United States, we're involved in this, all these characters like old radio-fiction characters in my mind. We pulled into Jackson Hole, Wyo. as it was sort of finally coming to its end. It was blizzarding, and during that afternoon, the road finally was just too snowy to go on anymore. We pulled up and stopped at a closed-down station, a big red, white and blue Chevron. Three days on peyote and national grief, and looking up in the sky in this blizzard coming down, and then this red, white and blue Chevron, and I thought, "This is no accident. This is something very, very special and deep."

And I began to cry, not so much for the president as for something American that was innocent and bright-eyed and capable. And it's not been the same since; we lost the last person I can think of that we could believe in. I remember when they finally said the president was dead, George Walker said, "The son of a bitch has killed him." He didn't say some son of a bitch, he said the son of a bitch. We thought we didn't have him. The European nations had him, the Muslim crazies had him, but the United States? No, we were above that. And this was a real loss of that opinion of ourselves as an innocent, wonderful, above-board nation. It was a loss of our feeling of invulnerability — that you could walk across the nation and be all right, nobody is going to hurt you. That next spring, we packed up to do the same thing, just drive across the country in a bus. It spun off of this feeling of seeing the landscape of the American people in this new way. I think the whole hippie movement, this love-every- body feeling for each other, was born of that feeling. It was born of the death. When God wants to really wake up a nation, he has to use somebody that counts. When God wants to get your attention, he always has to use blood.