When Kerouac met Kesey

They had a lot less in common than you might expect, writes Sterling Lord, their literary agent:

With all that happened to Kesey in the ’60s, why wasn’t he the darling of the East Coast literary world, as Kerouac had been in the ’50s? Kerouac was basically shy when outside his own milieu and in no way a self-promoter. But he lived much of the time in New York or nearby Long Island, and at least during the ’50s was accessible to the media, although he did not seek publicity or present himself well in public. They came to him. On the Road had electrified the literary community and sharply marked the arrival of a new generation, and he made good copy for the newspapers.

Kesey was anything but shy. He embraced people; he gave of himself to others. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the debut of a daring new voice, but in the end, Kesey’s profound impact on his generation and those to come was the result of his whole style of life—novels, bus trips, acid tests, public performances, and the like. Also, Kesey didn’t seek out the press and he lived so far away from what earlier journalists called “the ballyhoo belt”—New York City. Besides, as he put it, “fame gets in the way of creativity.”

Apparently Kesey never actually saw the much-praised film adaption of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and, when asked which was the best theatrical production of the book he'd seen, Kesey replied, "Sacramento High School." On that note, Kerouac's On the Road and Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test are both on my bookshelf. I really ought to get around to those.