On Kesey

It's been many years since I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, so many in fact, I don't remember whether I actually read the book or just saw the movie. It's assigned reading for the novel writing workshop I'm attending. I wasn't prepared to pick it up and not want to put it down, eating, sleeping, working, all interruptions keeping me from getting back to it. I was kind of blown away by how much I loved this book.

The cover advertises it as "a glittering parable of good and evil." Just twenty-two when the film came out in 1975, I may have seen it that way all those years ago. Now though, I am much more interested in the characters, the fascinating study in personalities. Big Nurse is a rule keeper, but one could argue she truly believes in what she is doing. McMurphy is no saint and actively participates in his own downfall. Chief Bromden isn't just a narrator, this is his story and the story of his people as much as it is McMurphy's.

This is a psychological thriller. Is McMurphy a psychopath? He shows some signs of being one. Is Nurse Ratched a sadist? Not all her actions imply that she is. The book needs these two strong personalities in a fight to the death. They must collide in order to break Bromden out of the protective shell of his self perceived helplessness. They are less characters in a novel than they are tools Kesey uses to discuss oppression and liberation, helplessness and self determination.

I have to laugh at myself whenever I notice my own prejudice against every generation that came before my own in terms of their psychological awareness, that somehow, Americans have never been more psychologically aware than we are now. More aware than we were in 1962. A prejudice perhaps encouraged by watching so many episodes of Madmen.

Kesey is brilliant in the way Jane Austen is. Transcending time and making you feel like you have a stake in how things turn out for these people, people they've created. And they can do this because they have a rare perception about people, how we act, think, and feel, about our limitations and our potential for heroic acts. And because they have a story that must be told, a story that can only be told by them. Oh that I might be so lucky. One can always hope.

More later.