Sometimes A Great Notion

After One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey published this 628-page tome about loggers in early-sixties Oregon. Our setting is Wakonda, a fictitious town home to a motley crew of down-trodden characters who are pissed off at the Stamper family. The Stampers run a large logging company and have decided not to honor a contract with a supply partner. This sets off a massive strike, and a scramble ensues within the family to recruit relatives to fill in for the protesting workers. Leland Stamper, the black-sheep son of the family, is summoned from New York to pitch in amidst this strike. While he agrees to come back west, Leland has a nefarious agenda: to settle an old score between himself and his domineering older half-brother Hank. Leland comes home after years of estrangement from the Oregon Stampers and is put to work right away, and gets accustomed to the demanding physical labor that characterizes the family business. He also becomes obsessed with Hank’s wife Viv.

Leland is by the far the most interesting and multi-dimensional character in this book. While he is the only college-educated member of the Stamper family, he is also the most mentally unsound. It is implied that he watched Hank have sex with his mother as a child, thereby provoking a psychological trauma that in turn provoked a mild case of schizophrenia. Not to mention a considerable pill problem.

Between major plot points, Kesey treats us with some literary garnishes that are generally pointless—various parables within Stamper family history, several vignettes involving a bar called the Snag, and a multitude of nature descriptions. The nature prose at first is lovely, but after the first two-hundred pages or so, it becomes tedious. 

Ken Kesey is a brilliant writer and I think this is a very impressive work. But it can also be a chore. Once a book becomes a chore, how much longer can you go on for? (For me, it was to go all the way just to say I did.)

So yes, the nature descriptions, as well as the constant weaving in and out of different POVs and streams of consciousness, can get tiresome. If you want the Kesey flavor, Cuckoo’s Nest is easily the best way to sample it. This is a deeper, more introspective cut, and only for the patient.

All in all, I’m calling it three stars out of four, mostly out of respect for Kesey’s contribution to the Pacific Northwest lit canon. It could easily be trimmed down by fifty percent, and because it isn’t, the drama loses umph. Kesey’s country bumpkin dialogue is also tough going (not to mention an inaccurate representation of Oregonians).

So, let’s call it 2 stars for Kesey’s efforts, 1 star for the brilliant characterization of Leland Stamper. I’m glad to have been here, but will not be coming again.