Kesey later befriended his heroes Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg, and mimicked a similar style of writing in Sometimes a Great Notion.
Kesey was friends with Neal Cassady, who was the hero Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Kesey tends to wander off course at times throughout the novel, but I believe that is due to his being influenced by the Beat writers who came before him. Once you know the characters, it is much easier to follow. I have heard people say that they always do better reading it the second time around, and I agree with that. The narrator in Sometimes a Great Notion changes abruptly and without warning, sometimes in mid-sentence. It is often compared to Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom in style and content, and it also bears a similar resemblance to The Sound and Fury. It is a brilliantly told story, but Kesey’s style of telling it is what is remarkable. This synopsis, of course, does not do the novel justice at all, and I do not feel that I have spoiled anything for anyone who has not read the book. This theme permeates throughout the novel in how the Stampers came to Oregon, stayed on their land alongside the Wakonda River, and battled the townspeople, the unions, the river, and each other. The Stamper family motto comes from the old patriarch, Henry Stamper, who once scrawled the words “Never give an inch” onto a birthday gift given to the younger Hank Stamper. After his return to the fold, many family struggles and tragedies unfold as the business struggles to meet a deadline. When they are short-handed, they bring in the lost sheep, the Stamper patriarch’s youngest son, who left the family at age 12 with his mother and eventually received an East Coast education-about as far removed from the Oregon logging industry as a person can get. When the local union goes on strike, the Stamper family logging business continues to work by employing only members of the family. The story itself tells the tragic tale of the Stamper family and their logging business in the fictional Oregon town of Wakonda. Once I figured it out, I could follow along the story line much better, and follow the narrator, as well.Īlso, I was reading this book for the first time when my son was born, so it will always have that wonderful association attached to it. To this day, I have read this magnum opus three times, and I may pick it up again soon just for funsies. And then it also became my favorite book of all time. So, now that I knew that I was simply a newbie and not merely a moron, I gave it one last try. Obviously, I had never read Faulkner, and I do not think I had even read any of John Steinbeck’s longer novels yet, either. I had no idea that such a style of writing existed. I had read every Stephen King book at least twice, and I had read the aforementioned One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and a host of others, but nothing terribly complex. You see, I read a lot, but up to that point, I had never read anything challenging. “You know the narrator keeps changing, right?”įuck! Seriously? That would have helped me to know this when I first picked it up. “I just don’t know what is happening, not to mention who is telling the damned story.” I mentioned this most recent failed attempt to a co-worker, who excitedly said, “Oh, Sometimes a Great Notion, that’s my favorite book, ever! How could you give up? It is so brilliant.” I really had no idea what was happening in the book. This time, I made it to about 100 pages and then threw it across the room in frustration. I had no idea what was going on, and was confused by the narration. I gave it a go in February of 2000, and chucked it after only 30 or so pages. Two of my oldest friends had always mentioned Sometimes a Great Notion, and they both named it as their favorite novel, so I had always meant to read it, but I did not get to it until early 2000.
I was well aware of Ken Kesey due to his affiliation with the Grateful Dead, and I had read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at least twice by this point. I received Sometimes a Great Notion on Christmas of 1999.
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