Anyone read The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe?

hey, i'm really into the 60s counterculture and was wondering if anyone as read the book, The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. What is it about and what are your thoughts on it?

I only looked over it. A friend of mine has it, so I will read it eventually. I am really gonna see the movie next year.

Tom Wolfe was a pioneer of "new journalism." It was a style where the reporter reports the story in a way similar to fiction (e.g., characters, dialogue, etc.) instead of just the kind of straight factual reporting you see in the newspapers. Sometimes the journalist reports the story in first person, making themselves a character in the story. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a great early example of this style of reporting.

It's primarily about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Ken Kesey is the novelist who wrote One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (yes, it was a novel before it was a movie). He was a major counterculture figure in the 60's and the Merry Pranksters were a group of his friends who traveled with him. This was at the height of the "hippie" era and experimentation with psychedelic drugs (especially LSD) was a key part of their lives. In the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Wolfe shared a cross-country trip with Kesey and the Pranksters in a psychedelic painted bus known as "Further." If you want to get an insight into what the psychedelic era of the 60's was about, this is the book to read.

Special bonus trivia: one of the Merry Pranksters was Neal Cassady. Neal Cassady was the person that the novel "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac was based upon. "On the Road" was a classic novel of the 50's Beat generation which influenced the 60's hippie/psychedelic years. Read "On the Road" and then "Electric Kool-Aid" and you'll have a great picture of mid-century counterculture.

Yeah I read that, and I thought that it was very interesting. If you know anything about Ken Kesey and his group of friends, then you will certainly appreciate it. Tom Wolfe was a journlist, so the book is written in a kind of journalistic narrative, but he is fairly good at description. I finished the whole thing in a couple of days, it was very interesting. And it's all true. What it is mainly about is this group of guys and girls who decide to go on a cross country bus trip stoned out of their minds on acid, but there is a a lot more to it than that as well, I can't remember everything it has been about four years since I read it, but if you are looking for something about counterculture in the 60's, I highly recommend it:)

It's about the Merry Pranksters travelling around in their hippie bus living life and being free. It's a great book and one of my favorites. I highly recommend it, it was like a bible to me back in my "acid test" days!

I've read it

I wouldn't say it is a very realistic or unbiased history of the people, interesting enough to read, but more of a love letter about the time than a true story.