Home Politics Atheism Culture Books
Colophon Contact RSS

"Cuckoo's Nest" turns 50

Years later, Kesey's masterpiece is still strangely relevant:
Although the formula that makes a book popular remains impossibly mysterious, one factor is the cultural environment in which it lands. As the culture changes, some books that appear significant for a time may fail to endure. I had feared "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" would be one of those books. But it isn't. In it, a stranger walks into a closed environment and subverts the rules, asking all along why anyone would passively live that way. This was a message embraced by the hippies of the '60s, but it resonates just as strongly with those who occupied Wall Street; two copies of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" are in the Occupy Wall Street library. Fifty years later, Kesey's work is still great.
If you haven't yet read this book, you really ought to.