Sometimes a Great Notion

Sometimes a Great Notion is an anti-union manifesto, a work of flowing literature that should be studied in the cloistering halls of higher learning--not as much for its deep meaning, but rather for the structure of its text (I dare a professor to take any one of the 600+ pages and study it for an entire semester), a masterpiece of prose, the second novel by The Great Ken Kesey (1935-2001), a juxtaposition of two brothers that has been unequalled since Tolstoy.

Sometimes a Great Notion is many things, including a followup to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest published two years prior in 1962. The latter book is an undeniable classic of literature that has rarely been equaled. Read my review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Sometimes a Great Notion was published in 1964 and Kesey's next novel would not be published until 1984 when Demon Box (a collection of short stories thinly-veiled as fiction) was launched. What was this supremely talented author doing for 20 years? Most would claim it was drugs. Kesey had spent time in clink to prove it. Who knows? And when he finally rid himself of the Technicolor synthetics flowing through his veins, his brain was fried into a pigskin cracklin'. Instead of the psychedelics unlocking fantastic worlds, they seem to have hidden them away from Kesey in a demon box.

Sometimes a Great Notion at times becomes a long-winded bore over vast swaths of pages. It makes one wonder if Ken Kesey lost the Oregon forest through the trees on which his characters hack out a living. At times he tries to be too literary. But Kesey pulls it out in the last 200 pages to a wonderful conclusion. A side note on the movie of the same name starring Robert Redford and Henry Fonda--skip over like a rolling log! It's a real Hollywood hack job that treats the novel as though it was a short story.

Sometimes
a
Great
Notion, in the hands of a master, is the closest you will ever get to the logging world of Oregon and the real-to-life characters Kesey created.

#ReviewSometimesaGreatNotion #KenKesey

By Andrew Barger - Author of The Divine Dantes trilogy

I bought this book after finishing One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.
This one is well written but the plot and characters move around so often it makes it hard to follow.
I'm still reading it but it's getting more and more frustrating as I go on.

Heard good things abut this book, but the scattered, confusing style was hard to sort through. The characters were interesting, but the excessive details prevented the forward movement of the plot, and I got bored.

Sometimes a Great Notion received great reviews. I was looking forward to this read, but I found it hard to follow. After numerous attempts to get into Kesey's writing style, I had to finally give up. I wasn't able to finish the book. It read nothing like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I am a voracious, eclectic, and wide ranging reader of some sixty years experience, and this is my favorite book. I have read and reread this book over the years since it was published, and find new meaning each time as reflected in the changes in my own life. Having read the reviews both negative and positive, I have a couple of things to say that might be helpful.
To those who have trouble with the fluctuations in time line and character voice, about sixty pages in the author enters the story with a short explanation regarding the true nature of time as more of a river, with whirlpools, eddys, and backwaters, than a straight geometric line. When you pay attention to this concept, metaphorically expressed in the description of the actual river that takes up so much of the narrative, the author's intent becomes crystal clear, and reveals itself as much more than a cheap trick, as some have suggested.
Also, there were some complaints about it being a very male oriented book (manly tales of manly men). Kesey himself pointed out at one time that he considered it a women's liberation text, and that the character of Viv, Hank's wife, was the true protagonist. The fates of the women in the book, Henry's first wife neglected and worn away, his second wife driven to isolation and suicide, Joe Ben's wife widowed and left to raise a family on her own, finally culminating in Viv's rejection of both brother's attempts to use her as an addendum to their own male agendas and her breaking away without an explanation to or the comprehension of the remaining males in the story, add up to quite a story.
As I said, I read it at different times from different perspectives, identifying with each character in turn, but it was the story of the women in the book which actually opened my eyes to a perspective different from my own, male, hardworking, striving viewpoint.
The best book in American literature since Huck Finn.

Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), Ken Kesey's second novel, is in my opinion a much better work than the much better known One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which has undoubtedly been helped by the success of the movie adaptation.

The story centers on the relationship between half brothers Lee and Hank Stamper, and especially the affair the somewhat older Hank had with Lee's mother while she was married to their father, which lends a kind of incestuous undertone to the proceedings even if it wasn't technically incest. Meanwhile, the Stampers face resentment from their community because they run a non-union logging operation (the employees are all members of the controlling family and not bound to the loggers union) while everyone else is suffering through a walkout.

There are conflicts galore here as Lee tries to get his revenge on Hank while the Stampers try to get on with filling a major order for lumber that would undercut the strike's effectiveness. Hank as a kind of Hairy Apish blue collar hero and the self-pitying, resentment-filled Lee are at the core, with Hank's wife Vivian as the crux of the conflict. But there are many other characters, including some local inhabitants whose movements and actions seem superfluous but offer a broader perspective on the milieu where the story takes place. Some are minor masterpieces of tangential characterization, such as the struggling, hen-pecked laundry owner who has a poignant affair with his black assistant, or the aged former whore who is now reduced to paying for sex by buying drinks.

For the most part, Kesey keeps the plot and all its threads going masterfully. He does this through a kind of multi-perspective approach that alternates first-person narration from different characters and omniscient third-person narration, jump-cutting from one to another sometimes even within sentences. This Joycean technique ranges from interesting when used sparingly to irritating when Kesey machine-guns perspective changes at the reader in rapid-fire order, sometimes multiple times in the same sentence. He does this especially in scenes of high drama, when all it does is muddle the picture. If a reader is spending more time trying to figure out the perspective changes than in appreciating the scene being described, there's a problem.

The perspective changes are signaled by the use of parentheses and alternating between standard type and italics. It doesn't help that this edition's typesetting made switches from italic to standard difficult to discern quickly. Maybe a higher quality printing job would have helped. In any case, I found this technique, when used to excess, a distracting affectation.

Fortunately, instances where Kesey runs off the rails with it are fairly rare, so I can't in all conscience reduce my five-star rating. Sometimes a Great Notion has to be one of the books in the conversation when the best American novels of the second half of the 20th century are discussed.

Ken Kesey has a wildly exuberant storytelling style. He throws out the bait, waits, then pulls us in, inch by inch, with vivid slangy insinuations, and forceful hammerblow words of love, beauty and jealousy.
The Stampers had stamped their insignia onto the land. Hank, always under the cloud of his father, needed release from the sheer cussedness. The album held letters from Viv's mother, requests for money, anecdotes, sentimentality, a little booklet of high school poems.
Viv hated her long forbidden to cut hair. It snarled in a zipper when the weather was cold, or, sweated to her brow and throat when the weather was warm. She had planned names for the children she never had. Viv had wanted a man who wanted the real me--what I am--was. She stares at the dead image, and feels hatred that sang in her ears like steam. She has been a dark fire, a cold fire, that melted them all beyond recognition. Burned them until they barely knew themselves.
The actual river falls five hundred feet, then opens out upon the fields. A vast smile of water, then closer, it flattens into a river, flat as a street, cement- gray with the pebbled texture of rain.
A pack of hounds, whimper with cold and brute frustration, barking at an object in the waters, twisting, swaying stiffly, stopping, slowly untwisting above the flood's current, a human arm, tied at the wrist, disappearing downward from the frayed shoulder.
The Old houses built along the river bank are all gone. Settlers learned to back- up a hundred yards. Along twenty miles, from Breakback Gully to Wakonda Bay, no houses stand on the bank. One single house defies all, to stand as a monument to a piece of extinct geography, marking the place where the rivers once held...it is the Old Stamper Place.
This book is filled with vivid imagery and descriptive writing. We can actually recognize woods, river, trees, rotten wood, devout amateurs, and the seasoned townspeople. And contrary to popular rumors, a small town is not always eager to cast the first stone. Not at the risk of hitting a good thing.
We encounter reality, optimism, enthusiasm. Perhaps even, tree toads that sing bright good-bys. Excellent.

This novel draws, both implicitly and explicitly, on the literary traditions of the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, Moby Dick, Matthew Arnold, etc. There are the biblical themes of the struggles between brothers, the younger brother eclipsing the elder, the dangers of knowledge. There are particularly strong references to Milton's "Paradise Lost." Note that whenever Viv appears in the book, there is always a reference to her hair, and coiling; compare Milton's descriptions of Eve in "Paradise Lost, also usually in terms of her hair (for example, "Her unadorned golden tresses wore / Disheveled, but in wanton ringlets waved / As the vine curls her tendrils" PL, Book IV, ll. 303-05). The names are also quite similar in sound and meaning (Viv, the Latin etymological root for "life;" and Eve, related etymologically in Hebrew to "a living being"). But this is not a mere re-telling of any prior book. It clearly describes a particular place at a particular time (the Pacific Northwest in the late 1950s). It shows the tensions of that time between union and non-union workers; between blue collar and white collar workers; between the "native" born inhabitants and the newly arrived; between physical and intellectual pursuits. It explores the morality of revenge, the idea of family, and the ever presence of death. The technique used by the author in cutting from the perspective of one character to that of another--without clear punctuation signaling the shift, is breathtaking and effective. It gives the reader a simultaneous view of the same situation from different view points--resulting in a layered and rich understanding of the complexity created by the dynamic nature of all situations.

I had the great good fortune of calling Ken Kesey a life long friend. I had read ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST when I was in college, as part of a reading assignment for a psychology class at Ohio University. I was stunned from the opening page: the power of Kesey's words, his characters, the heart wrenching struggles inside the mental institution just floored me. I walked around for days with the book under my arm. Then I read SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION, and my belief in the grandeur of American literature was transformed. Ken once told me "Cuckoo's Nest is the famous book. Great Notion is the great book." Even he knew he had done something wonderful. I met him in 1973 when a friend took me to his farm in Oregon, and together we founded the Santa Cruz Poetry Festival, which we then took the the University of Oregon, giving what Lawrence Ferlinghetti called "a new birth to American poetry." He was a remarkable man, the most civil, intelligent, fearless human being I had ever met. SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION is his "East of Eden," a sprawling, emotional, lyric portrait of a people who lived close to the land, this American land we cherish and seem to be losing. I believe he was the finest American novelist since John Steinbeck. He said to me, repeatedly, "I'll never write another book as good as Sometimes A Great Notion," which floored me. I think he got distracted, and never found a subject as near and intimate as the life he lived in the Oregon woods. He was a remarkable man, with all of his human foibles, who left us this masterpiece, and a large chunk of his heart, his soul, and his incomparable vision of the American West. We have not seen his likes again. James Dalessandro, author, 1906.

I find it interesting that the initial reviews for Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion, in '64, were almost overwhelmingly negative. Perhaps the book was so ahead of its time, it took people a while to come to terms with just how wonderful and enveloping this book really is.

This is one of the few novels that actually held me in such awe that I had to stop reading for a few moments periodically, or I'd become too overwhelmed with emotion, due to the pure beauty in Kesey's prose. When he describes a "honker" flying past the river in the Redwoods, you can smell, hear, see, and feel all the sights and sounds surrounding you. It took almost no effort on my part, compared to contemporaries such as Pynchon, who's great in his own way, but at times can be mentally draining when trying to visualize just what the heck is going on.

I urge everyone to stick it out through the first 80-100 pages or so, as the constant POV shifting, sometimes in mid-paragraph, can take a little getting used to. But trust me, once you let go and just go with the flow, I guarantee you'll be absolutely immersed in the world of the Stamper clan, and will most likely never forget these characters. I know I never will. And I know I'll never read another novel that's affected me as much as this one has.

If you mix a post-beat generation flair with Faulkner, but wrap it all in a love/hate/love passion for the subtle, dangerous, and indomitable Oregon coastal river climate, you could get an idea that the setting of this wrenching tale may be the entire motive force for the story. But that isn't quite it. The individuals themselves have a force all their own. It may be their only mistake was to forget the lessons their grandparents learned when settling the damp river shores ... the river and the sea and the tide will win. Not very compatible with the father's motto, "Never give a inch."

This is a family that wants to and does love one another, but just as the river can wear down hard stones over the years, none of them have the faintest idea they've already been beaten. Each of them thinks the others must be able to interpret them, and so they never actually say the simple things that could bind them back together. One has to wonder if it's because in their hearts they already knew it was over. A family in such a state is ill equipped to deal with business competitors, angry unions ginned up by carpet baggers, and anyone and everyone else who wants to find someone to blame. The pointers keep coming back to the family, an easy, obvious target.

And if this sounds depressing and gloomy, sure. But deliciously so. Every page is so well written you could take your time to just enjoy. Don't rush this book. It can take awhile, but if you're willing to let the author have his way you'll end up grateful you did.

Sometimes A Great Notion, is not only Kesey's finest novel, it is also one of the finest novels written by an American in the 20th Century. Like all great authors, Kesey shows us the world outside the caves of our own existance and thereby illuminates and illustrates a vibrant world now becoming increasingly extinct.
Like Steinbeck's Joads, the Stamper family of "Notion" are victims of a rapidly disappearing history. The great forests that they work, grow and live and die in are (or have already) disappearing and yet they hold on, refusing to "give an inch".
By shifting point of view and verb tense, Kesey paints his narrative on a broad canvas filled with fully drawn characters and settings. The fictitious town of Wakonda Oregon lives and breathes as an active organism, evolving and molding its citizens in spiritual as well as physical ways far beyond their control.
The novel is tragic as well as humourous. A great sequence in which the super Alpha male Hank Stamper debates modern Jazz with the effete half brother Lee is bizarre yet entertaining as it contrasts vividly with the extremely accurate depictions of forestry practices.
The book works on many, many levels. It is a travellouge, it is a Lazarus story, it is a history, it is a family portrait, it is Cain and Able, it is a revenge story, it is many many things. And most of all, like all great books, it is well worth re-reading. Add this to your library immediately!

Could this be the Great American Novel? I first read it when taking a literature class my senior year at the University of Oregon. Since it was one of three required books for that class and nearly 600 pages long, it just got a quick once over. Now, thirty years later, I read it again this time savoring each page as I was drawn into a truly amazing story.
Either you are going to love this novel or hate it. Lets face it; it is not an easy book to read. The story shifts forward and backward in time, leaving the reader wondering where in the world he is. Also the story is told from numerous perspectives, with the first person shifting from one character to another. For instance in the chapter which describes the pickup ride to the state park, (chapters are neither named nor numbered) the story jumps from third person narrative, to first person with Lee telling the story and then from Lee, to Hank, to Henry and to Joe Ben, shifting from character to character so fast (as many and three times in one paragraph) it leaves the reader wondering just who is doing the talking.
Kesey has an amazing way with words, he captures the rural logging culture of Oregon. As you read it, you can literally feel the dampness and moss begin to grow between your toes from the incessant Oregon rain. Describing the rain as the returning an old maiden aunt who has come to live with you over the winter, or as the migrating geese that fly overhead the Oregon rain is the backdrop on which the story is told. Kesey also hit the nail right on the head describing the sociology of a small town. Hollywood, more often than not, describes small town American in condescending tones of being holier than thou. How often have we seen in the movies, the ladies moral society running the fallen women out of town? Kesey rightly observes rather than being judgmental small town America is more tolerant of peoples failings and faults. Why? Because everyone knows each other too well. Small town people have a there-I-go-but-by-the-grace-of-God attitude because they know full well that the sin they condemn in others, could be very well condemned in them. One more comment. As you read it, be sure to read the chapter on the perfect day that concludes with the foxhunt carefully. It is descriptive writing at its best. I will not give the story away, but it is magnificent.
Any complaints? Yeah a couple. His portrayal of the church a Pentecostal and Metaphysical Science was absurd. No such thing exists. Metaphysical churches tend to be on the cultic side, ie., Christian Science. Pentecostal churches, on the other hand tend to emphasis holiness and as a result you would not see the pastor drinking with the guys in the local bar. It is the one aspect of the logging culture of Oregon he got wrong. One more thing. Why did Kesey place the novel in a fictional town, on a fictional river while going to extraordinary lengths to document Oregon geography? I cannot figure that one out.
All in all, this is the Great American Novel. So on a cool fall day, curl up on the couch with a copy of Sometimes a Great Notion, and spend the next few weeks being transported to the rainy Oregon coast and read a truly great novel.

Ken Kesey's novel is wonderfully evocative of the Oregon coast's timber townsofn the 1950's. I remember them from my childhood and Kesey's novel accurately captures the speech and attitudes of those lumbermen. I was reminded of expressions my father used that I had not thought of in years.

The action of the novel is quite compelling. It is the story of two brothers and their father struggling with each other, the town, and the elements. Many will recognize this novel as the basis for Paul Newman's movie Sometimes a Great Notion which was filmed on the Oregon coast. This Penguin Classics edition of the novel is attractive and designed to be readable.

But most importantly, this is the greatest novel about trilobites ever written - a genre with admittedly little competition. Consider this sentence:

As a trilobite wades out of the paleolithic age and drags itself across the ruts of Breakbutt Road into the outskirts of town, and across a field of hop clover and beer cans, finally up the steps of the Mad Scandinavian's shack to stop and scratch at the front door like a dog wanting in out of the chill.

For readers looking for more information about trilobites, I would recommend two other books: The Trilobite Book: A Visual Journey and Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution.

This is a truly great book. My favorite of Kesey's although `Last Go Round' is good it doesn't compare to the weight that this book carries. What I find I like best about this book and parts of others that Kesey has written are the build up throughout the book when two intriguing characters finally meet to fight it out that I just explain as what happens when the Irresistible Force Meets An Immovable Object. Just fascinating and has me ready to read this book and the other I mentioned to capture once again the feeling of anticipation and nervousness that I experienced when I first read them. If you haven't read any of Kesey's books or just have read `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' definitely give this one a shot. I don't think you will be disappointed.

This is a deep, intense, fantastically written novel. I don't know if I've ever read a book that has gotten me so involved in what is happening. A technique that Kesey uses that greatly contributes to the depth of the work is his constant, unpredictable change of tense and character perspective. At first, this can be hard to follow, but one gets used to it quickly and it adds tremendous levels of meaning and perspective to every plot turn. It touches on so many themes so well it is hard to say succinctly what the book is "about." Family ties of every sort, Community, Nature, Identity, Pride, Love, Legacy, Labor...are just some of the issues swirling around in this book. The setting: a coastal Oregon logging town along the great Wakonda River, mostly on strike against the logging company but for one family, the Stampers, who have always taken their own course but are not without their own divisions and drama. This is quite possibly, THE Great American Novel.

An ambitious, sprawling and rewarding novel, encompassing themes of love, hate, loyalty, betrayal and revenge, all played out against the background of a loggers' strike in a small town on the Oregon coast. At its core are the various members of the Stamper family, ranging from heroic to repulsive, but even minor characters such as aging prostitute Indian Jenny or gay bartender Teddy, are fully rounded and totally believable. 'Sometimes a Great Notion' is a challenging novel, as Kesey continually shifts the narrative from past to present and from character to character, but well worth the effort. Although more people are probably familiar with 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', thanks to the film version, this book is Kesey's masterpiece.

This is a great narrative about a family in Oregon came to become harhly independent, and how that pits them against each other and their neighbors in the midst of a labor strike in the lumber industry. The opening scene, of the wife taking the union chief through the family album, to explain all that he didn't understand in trying to get the Stamper clan to succumb to the union's needs quickly unravels into narrations provided by the wife, the two half-brothers, the father, as well as the generations before on the westward-bound trek.
Kesey brings in all the varieties of conflict we learned about in high school: man against man, man against nature, and man against self, in a rich variety of ways. The rivalries between the half-brothers sincere and also misunderstood at the same time, plus the ever-present element of tension between the family and the town; the threat of the river is constant; the neuroses of the family members over their memories of the past...
This is a hugely satisfying read, and one of the few books I would give to anyone without hesitation.

If one thing is clear about this novel (and clarity is, I'm afraid, not the first word that comes to mind when I think of Sometimes a Great Notion), then it's that Kesey was attempting (but, I'm afraid, rarely succeeding) in using what one can most charitably call an "experimental" writing style to present the reader with a multiple stream of consciousness narrative - a style which the reader, apparently, (according to one reviewer here at the store) is supposed to "work hard" to understand so that they will be "richly rewarded". If one reads a novel about a culture they don't completely identify with (for example, as an American "working hard" to understand Joyce's Ulysses) one can at least say that the effort stems from being unfamiliar with the cultural terrain. But for an American reader to find himself constantly perplexed by an American novel about a logging family in the twentieth century, which often uses inflated verbiage, coupled with rapid shifts of voice, mood and time, says more about the failure of the author, than of the reader. Not only does Kesey's experimental style style confuse, but it detracts from his ability to convey coherently what his characters are like. We get just a little of them snatched a bit at a time from a welter of overwritten prose. Often Kesey dips into a descriptive style that seems intent on creating the impression of apocalyptic "sound and fury", albeit at a very local level. Also, there is a certain artificiality in the character's use of everyday language that isn't quite convincing. You can see what Kesey wants to do, but you are hardly swept up into the world he wants to portray - unless maybe you "work hard" - real hard. I could go on, but I'll stop here by saying I wholeheartedly agree with all the others who found this novel wanting.

I just got through rereading this novel after a span of about 40 years. Enough has been said about it in these posts - it IS a great story, & I see now how much it influenced my perspectives over the years. However, I give it 4 stars because I believe it needs some serious editing, particularly the multiple stream of thought & action sections. Some of these are just too long & boring, & some are too confusing as they are written. Some contemporary authors (I'm thinking António Lobo Antunes & Jose Saramago right off) pull this off a whole lot better. Nonetheless, I think this is Kesey's best & out to be offered in high school & college reading lists. However, it's probably not PC enough, so that's not gonna happen.

The lumbermen of Wakonda, Oregon are on strike, trying to pressure the Oregon lumber companies to pay more favorable prices. The strike becomes bitter when the Stamper family, bucking the strike and refusing to support the union, struggles to honor a contract with the Wakonda-Pacific Lumber Company at the expense of the town. Needing all the labor they can muster, the Stampers summon Leland Stanford Stamper, the bookish black sheep who left home twelve years before, vowing some day to return to ruin his half-brother, Hank Stamper. Leland returns home in the midst of the strike to wreak his ill-defined plot of revenge against his father and Hank, whom he blames for his mother's broken life and eventual suicide. Thus the Stamper family faces attack from the townsfolk and from within. This is the story Ken Kesey tells in his high-octane prose and skillfully weaved sentences. Kesey creates a very complex narrative that moves in and out of the stream-of consciousness among Hank and Leland Stamper and the third-person narrator, but the transitions are seamless, and the reader has very little difficulty following the narrative. Kesey creates some wonderful symbolism within the story. For example, the Stamper house, built at the turn of the century at the river's edge, rests upon a foundation supported by pilings of beams, cable, and steel girders that the Stamper family has added through the years. The foundation is under constant threat of being washed away whenever the river rises, and Hank Stamper, like his father before him, finds himself driven almost nightly to check the foundation, to tie more cable and add more wood. Kesey's sentences are vivid and establish a cadence to match the mood of each chapter. Consider this description of the web of foundation supports under the Stamper house: "White timbers less than a year old cross ancient worm-rutted pilings. Bright silvery nailheads blink alongside oldtime squarehaed spikes rusted blind." The reader finds that the sentences glide past, pulling the reader into the story. Kesey creates several memorable characters, most notably Hank Stamper, who despite his masculinity and hard-nosed ways, is cabable of guilt and doubt and at times, tenderness. An excellent read.

I cannot recall the last time I enjoyed reading a novel as much as I did reading this book. Ken Kesey created a masterpiece when he wrote this book. Reading this novel was like entering into another world, complete with characters so rich and believable that they will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

"I think 'Sometimes a Great Notion' is the best thing I'll ever write," Ken Kesey once said from his home in Pleasant Hill, Ore. "Writing it was much different from 'Cuckoo's Nest,' which often seemed like filling in the blanks.
"'Notion,' to my mind, is a great piece of work. People sometimes ask me why I don't write something like that again and I reply that I simply can't. I can't keep all that in my head at once anymore. Why, on 'Notion,' I used to work 30 hours at a stretch -- you've got to have youth to do that."

All in all, a tremendous piece of work that will leave you stunned and in awe of this man's creative talents. No wonder he didn't write another book for 20 years; there was nothing left to say or to prove after this novel.

Sometimes a Great Notion could very well be the most ambitious book I have ever read. And not only is it ambitious, but the author pulls off the effect wonderfully. Kesey epitomized the sixties, traveling across the country on a multi-colored bus and engaging in much drug abuse. Although the rambling stream-of-consciousness style may be remniscent of the sixties, his ideas ultimately are not. At least from my interpretation of the book.
I won't repeat the plot since you can read about that in other reviews, but let me say that the character development in this novel is legendary, right up there with Conrad. I can still hear an angry townsperson screaming, "Stammmmmmper! Damn you Hank Stammmper!!" You see, the townspeople don't like ole Hank, because he just keeps on working while the rest of the men are on a strike, spending their time drowning their sorrows in watered down whisky. And Hank could care less what they think, since they are mostly hypocrites. He lives for himself, and always treats the men who hate him with the utmost respect, which just infuriates them even more. The high school football team has his picture on their dummies.
The book is full of secondary characters who we only see fleetingly while they struggle with life and meaning and their own failures. We have Viv, Hank's wife, who is only loved for the comfort she can provide. Love is selfish, life isn't fair. This book is full of insight, incest, infuriation and...what else starts with an i....oh it is just incredible. I recommend it without reservation.

In "Sometimes A Great Notion" Kesey truly puts his heart and soul into his story. Perhaps that is because it is very autobiographical. In this book, Kesey was writing about what he truly knows, what he actually experienced.

The story is unique in its intensity, and its focus on the deep seated emotional scars between family members. Pitted against this very personal story is the animosity between the town lumber workers, and Kesey's family, which was a non-Union operation, that did not honor the lumber strike.

Kesey captures the emotions, feelings and character of the entire region. The fight against the constant rain of the Pacific Northwest, and the rugged individual concept, that drove Americans West in the first place.

But at the core of it all, Kesey tells so wonderfully the crux of his story, on his title page, where he quotes from the song "Good Night, Irene," By Huddie Ledbettter and John Lomax:

"Sometimes I live in the country,

Sometimes I live in the town,

Sometimes I get a great notion

To jump in the river ... an' drown."

The entire seasonal depression of the experience and the dark and difficult battle of minds and bodies between the main character and his brother makes the book so personal that it is hard to stop reading his story.

For all who are interested in the internal emotional workings of semi-functional families, this book creates that milieu with tremendous aplomb.

Looking through previous reviews, I notice that most of the reviewers, particularly those who love this book like I do, are from the Northwest. I think that is because those of us who are from that region recognize the truth of this novel for the people who make their living logging, farming, and fishing in the rough and tumble rural regions. The book is filled with real characters who have real life sturggles and search for some meaning in thier endeavours. The Stampers, the old time logging family who has built a business from nothing and "Never give an inch" are the types of people imagine by most Western idealists--they are hard working, rugged individualists. They do their job the best the can without complaining and don't care about getting help from anyone else. It is a terrific story. What Kesey also does well is create passion--for the characters, their work, and their lifestyles. He writes with a sense of urgency, and though his writing can meander and wander, it always comes back to the heart of the matter.
Sometimes a Great Notion is a terrific novel and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the Northwest a little better, likes great writing, and enjoys American sociology, because this book certainly provides insights into the logging society. I can not recommend it highly enough.

That this greatest work of iconic, if underappreciated, American author, Ken Kesey, is not more widely read is one of the great tragedies of modern American literary culture. Kesey is generally best known for his groundbreaking 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and his role as the leader of the cross country- and LSD-tripping Merry Pranksters, whose exploits were famously chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Both are excellent works and well worth a read, especially if you have interest in either the Beat Generation (whose individualistic ideals and perspective Kesey largely inherited) or the drug-fueled love-fest of West Coast America in the 1960's and 70's. But any lover of great literature, particularly great American literature, and particularly particularly great male American literature, is doing himself a serious disservice by ignoring what is undoubtedly Kesey's greatest work, Sometimes a Great Notion.

The novel chronicles the Stamper family of Oregon, whose fiercely-independent and hard-scrabble life is played out among the teeming, danger-filled forests that they log and on the banks of the Wakonda River, whose waters have eroded the land about the Stamper family home to the point that the live on a virtual island. Like the setting, the characters are well-drawn and endlessly interesting, from the half-crazed patriarch, Henry Stamper, to the physically brutal but dependable eldest son, Hank Stamper, to the patient loyalty and creeping desire of Hank's wife, Vivian Stamper, to the softer intellectual person of Leland Stamper, the estranged half-brother of Hank who returns to the family logging business just as the Stampers stand off against powerful union interests, which demand that the family shut down operations to support an ongoing loggers strike.

But it is not just the compelling story of rugged individualism and fierce family loyalty that makes this perhaps the greatest novel ever written in American Literature (and we say perhaps only because we have not read them all). Kesey also innovates in style, using a technique of multiple first-person, stream of consciousness accounts of thought and action to bring the gritty characters to life. The points of view move from person to person furiously over the course of a single page and the reader can imagine the 72-hour amphetamine-fueled stints that Kesey admitted to in his writing of it. Whatever your criticisms of his technique, the effect is pure artistry--a symphony of action and emotion that builds to a crescendo that pits the Stamper family against all the arrayed forces of man and nature.

We have no problem placing this book at the top of our list of books for men and recommend it above all others for its incredible story and innovative style.

In his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, Charles Bowden describes Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion as “one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century.” This critique is now dated, since the novel was written in 1964. Nevertheless, I would agree with the sentiment—and probably add a couple of decades as well. This is an astonishingly good book, and without question one of the best that I have read.

I read Ken Kesey�s �Sometimes A Great Notion� at the urging of a friend, a debt I may never quite repay.
This is a truly epic novel, the story of�well what exactly? It�s the story of Leland Stamper, a Yale-educated, twenty-something intellectual grappling with near-suicidal depression in the wake of his mother�s suicide. It�s the story of Henry Stamper, Lee�s older half-brother, a hard-driving, stubburn, smart and narrow-minded bull of a man, determined and passionate, a fighter to his core and strong�oh so strong. It�s the story of Hank Stamper, their father a craggy old cood of a man, cantankerous, disagreeable, hillybilly and bully. It�s the story of the Stamper Family�s logging operation, which persist one automn despite a strike by the local logging union, various sabotage attempts directed by the leaders of said union, the unanimous opposition and anger of the local townsfolk, from Injun Jenny, the local whore, to the manager of the local movie theater. It is the story of Viv�ah Viv�a latter-day Helen of Troy, the lonely wife of Henry Stamper and object of Lee�s intended revenge upon the hated clan of his birth. Oh, and it�s the story of love, death, small town life, big business, labor and a few other incidental subjects here and there.
This was Kesey�s second novel, and while I�d read One Flew Over the Cuckoo�s Nest in college, nothing prepared me for the magnificence of this book. Hell, I hadn�t even heard of it.
First, the writing is brilliant. It�s a tough read at parts. Kesey has a way of jumping from narrative to inner monologue to spoken dialogue and then back to one or the other in no particular order, much as real life tends to unfold. Very hard to follow at times, but when you get the hang of it, it�s brilliant. Even when he meticulously intersperses scenes of a hunt, scenes of a romantic encounter, and the inner thoughts of a lone, lost and wounded hound. I nearly cried at that, which is saying something. Kesey masterfully creates unique, independent characters with these devices�with a larger impact that I�ll talk more about in a moment.
Second, the plot is just so darned good. Kesey interweaves all these stories�family dysfunction, sibling warfare, small town life�and does so without ever really taking his pedal off the gas. It�s not 500 pages of character development; the characters develop in the context of a truly compelling story. But the characters don�t develop at the cost of plot, or vice versa. Nothing seems forced, it�s incredibly honest, full of surprises. You�ll cry at parts. (I did.) Hell, it�s so good that, when I got to the end, I didn�t even close the cover. I just went back to the first page and reread the first chapter (made more sense the second time around.) Unlike several recent books that have left me greatly disappointed in their resolutions, this ending caught me by surprise and left me quite satisfied.
Third, he captures such monumental themes in such compelling ways. I mean, the narrative is full of grand twists and tunrs, always keeping you guessing. And in the end you�re convinced that the evolution of these characters, the discovery, is genuine and honest. And then you realize Kesey�s embedded timeless themes into the story, while you weren�t looking.
Fourth, and finally, a very specific observation tied to my personal interests as a writer and avid reader: He manages to create authentic characters with independent points of view. I truly felt that each character�s perspective was properly rationalized. It made sense that they felt this way, even when they were at complete conflict with one another. That reasonable people can view the world in different ways is real, and powerful, but often impossible to pull off in print. It�s much easier to make one side of the story the �right side� and resolve things that way. Kesey didn�t choose that road, and we�re all the better for it.
So, to summarize, I may never read a book this good again.

I read Ken Kesey�s �Sometimes A Great Notion� at the urging of a friend, a debt I may never quite repay.
This is a truly epic novel, the story of�well what exactly? It�s the story of Leland Stamper, a Yale-educated, twenty-something intellectual grappling with near-suicidal depression in the wake of his mother�s suicide. It�s the story of Henry Stamper, Lee�s older half-brother, a hard-driving, stubburn, smart and narrow-minded bull of a man, determined and passionate, a fighter to his core and strong�oh so strong. It�s the story of Hank Stamper, their father a craggy old cood of a man, cantankerous, disagreeable, hillybilly and bully. It�s the story of the Stamper Family�s logging operation, which persist one automn despite a strike by the local logging union, various sabotage attempts directed by the leaders of said union, the unanimous opposition and anger of the local townsfolk, from Injun Jenny, the local whore, to the manager of the local movie theater. It is the story of Viv�ah Viv�a latter-day Helen of Troy, the lonely wife of Henry Stamper and object of Lee�s intended revenge upon the hated clan of his birth. Oh, and it�s the story of love, death, small town life, big business, labor and a few other incidental subjects here and there.
This was Kesey�s second novel, and while I�d read One Flew Over the Cuckoo�s Nest in college, nothing prepared me for the magnificence of this book. Hell, I hadn�t even heard of it.
First, the writing is brilliant. It�s a tough read at parts. Kesey has a way of jumping from narrative to inner monologue to spoken dialogue and then back to one or the other in no particular order, much as real life tends to unfold. Very hard to follow at times, but when you get the hang of it, it�s brilliant. Even when he meticulously intersperses scenes of a hunt, scenes of a romantic encounter, and the inner thoughts of a lone, lost and wounded hound. I nearly cried at that, which is saying something. Kesey masterfully creates unique, independent characters with these devices�with a larger impact that I�ll talk more about in a moment.
Second, the plot is just so darned good. Kesey interweaves all these stories�family dysfunction, sibling warfare, small town life�and does so without ever really taking his pedal off the gas. It�s not 500 pages of character development; the characters develop in the context of a truly compelling story. But the characters don�t develop at the cost of plot, or vice versa. Nothing seems forced, it�s incredibly honest, full of surprises. You�ll cry at parts. (I did.) Hell, it�s so good that, when I got to the end, I didn�t even close the cover. I just went back to the first page and reread the first chapter (made more sense the second time around.) Unlike several recent books that have left me greatly disappointed in their resolutions, this ending caught me by surprise and left me quite satisfied.
Third, he captures such monumental themes in such compelling ways. I mean, the narrative is full of grand twists and tunrs, always keeping you guessing. And in the end you�re convinced that the evolution of these characters, the discovery, is genuine and honest. And then you realize Kesey�s embedded timeless themes into the story, while you weren�t looking.
Fourth, and finally, a very specific observation tied to my personal interests as a writer and avid reader: He manages to create authentic characters with independent points of view. I truly felt that each character�s perspective was properly rationalized. It made sense that they felt this way, even when they were at complete conflict with one another. That reasonable people can view the world in different ways is real, and powerful, but often impossible to pull off in print. It�s much easier to make one side of the story the �right side� and resolve things that way. Kesey didn�t choose that road, and we�re all the better for it.
So, to summarize, I may never read a book this good again.

This is the Kesey novel that nobody read after One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest stole all its thunder. Although it was filmed with an great cast (Henry Fonda, Paul Newman) it never gained the reputation that its inferior sibling achieved.
This is, quite simply, one of the great classics of the 20th century. Its pace and moody evocation of the American North West are stunning. The collision between the traditional and the modern, the past and the present make riveting, enthralling reading.
The Stamper family are loggers, rough, hard men and women who care for no ones opinion but their own. They are fighting the union, the neighbours, the town, their whole world. Their motto of "never give an inch" was the title of the film of the book. Into the strike-breaking start of the book comes the dope-smoking, college educated half brother, the prodigal son. His arrival triggers a tidal wave of events that spiral gradually out of control until everything that has been permanent before is now threatened.
If I seem vague in this review it is simply that I don't want to deprive you of the pleasure of discovering this story for yourself. This is one of the forgotten masterpieces. A book to be read, and then passed on to friends who are later bullied to give it back to be read again.

All your pundantry, your eastcoastcentricty......No its not Tender is the Night....its not The Great Gatsby, its not Look Homeward Angel, its not...Tropic of Capricorn, or On The Road....its not Grapes of Wrath, V., Catcher in the Rye, Under the Volcano....its not Moby Dick, its not Leaving Cheyanne....all great contenders...Its the Great American novel.....Take this one in....marvel in its depth...its bold dream scape of reality across this land to the great Northwest........ come on, you all better look back....this IS the Great American Novel....

Overall, I found this novel to be nothing short of spectacular. Kesey's swirling and snaking narrative echoes the ebb and flow of the mighty Wakonda Auga (the fictional river setting of the book), and the character development is phenomenal. Many people find the multiple narrative difficult to follow, but once you get used to it, it flows nicely, and it is a refreshing change to the standard single point of view of most books (though it is not a method pioneered by Kesey, he uses it masterfully).

Being a local color writer, Kesey obviously spent a considerable amount of time researching the Oregon Coast, and it paid off in full with its beautiful and perfect descriptions of the woods and wildlife. I have yet to find a writer (native Oregonian or not) come even close to Kesey's remarkable knowledge of the region. I would even reccommend this book on the strength of the setting description alone; if you are a budding writer having trouble with setting description, take a few lessons from this novel, though I warn you, Kesey sets the bar pretty high!.

One of the only qualms I have with the book, and it bothered me throughout, is that nearly all the women in the book are either found in the kitchen cooking for their men, or prostituting themselves to the men, used as instruments to satisfy male characters' plans for vengeance, or as sexual objects. There is not nearly as much character development for the women as there is for the men, and only in the last several pages in the book does a female character do anything for anyone other than her man. If you are a reader who enjoys strong female characters (even if they are not main characters) then you will probably not enjoy this book very much. That being said, this is essentially a book about rough and tumble loggers and their struggle with The Man, and as politically incorrect as it may seem, the reality is that women are not often (practically never) directly involved in the logging process. It just would have been nice to see Kesey's female characters shine a bit more, and as something other than just sex objects or instruments used at the whims of the men.

One other qualm I had, and this is just nit-picky, is that there are some parts of the book that drag just a little bit. There is some unecessary character development, amd some parts that don't serve any purpose other than distracting from the already rich story. These moments are few and far between, however, and as soon as they are passed, you are right back in the story.

And a marvelous story it is.

I only give it 4 stars (if I could, I'd give it 4 1/2) simply because I feel that people throw "5 stars" around way too often, and it becomes meaningless. 4 (and a half) stars is still extemely good, and if you are reading these reviews in order to come to a decision on whether or not to buy it; DO IT. You won't be sorry. It is a book that you may have to work at a little bit, but it is very rewarding.

This is a fantastic novel. Simple as that -- and I think the key word in it is: Understand, listen. Stop and listen, stop and be humble. You will not "loose yourself" by stopping for a sec to understand another human being. For some people the quite intense and "un-structured" way that Kesey passes out the information can be chaotic or maybe just annoying. If you've read this book you have probably thanked yourself for working more than usual in the beginning of it (after that it's like riding a bike) -- if you've quit somewhere in it, then take my advice (and the other reviewers) and pick it up again and work a bit more. It is a risky thing to do like Kesey: if the reader doesn't feel like working more than usual, the book just collects dust in the shelf. But if the reader does work the reward is, I think, tremendous.
This book is surely one of those few books that will stay very, very close to me for the rest of my life. I have a few already -- like Kerouac's On the road and Desolation Angels (and maybe The Dharma Bums), Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground and The Brothers Karamazov and...well, and more. But Sometimes a Great Notion is up there (not in a list, they are not ranked. They have just taken a special part in my nature, in my life).
When I read it I got a feeling that said that this was the ideal novel -- it had it all. It was demanding, funny, sad, intense, warm, tragic and optimistic. There's many scenes that in theirselves are worth remembering. And it is, by the way, lovingly, and in a convincing way, anti-intelletual. Read it, I really mean it.

Sometimes A Great Notion is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest pieces of American literature. I read this book when I was 18, 25, 33, 45 and now once again at my half-century mark. With each read the book has taken on more meaning, more clarity, more subtlety--more importance to living itself.

When I heard of Kesey's passing recently I felt a remorse, a sadness that I had never gone out of my way to meet him and look him in the eye and tell him that this one work of his had touched my life in many ways, moreso than almost any other book I've read.

Other reviews here sum up the narrative well, but there is one passage near the end that cuts far into the meat of the novel:

"...there is always a sanctuary more, a door that can never be forced whatever the force; a last inviolable stronghold that cannot be taken, whatever the attack. Your vote can be taken, your name, your innards, even your life. But that last stronghold can only be surrendered--and to surrender it for any reason other than love is to surrender love..."

An important lesson for us all. We can only hope that Ken has found his eternal sanctuary.

So says the blurb from Esquire magazine on the back cover of my copy. Without getting too technical, that's a pretty good way to describe the book's style.

I disagree with a lot of the things people are saying here. Sometimes a Great Notion is not the Great American Novel. Though it is arguably the Great Pacific Northwest Novel. It is also not as good as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But it is still a very fine book, and Ken is one of America's greatest and most entertaining storytellers. I wish he had written more and given us more stories. So enjoyable is he to spend time with.

I say the novel is not as good as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest basically because I don't think the story is as good a vehicle for Ken's themes as Cuckoo's Nest was. In his stories, firstly, Ken's characters are always fighting some outside force that simply won't let them be themselves. Often something that is trying to make them "small". Secondly, Ken is at his best when he is describing certain types of crazy amusing characters. The mental hospital in Cuckoo's Nest turned out to be the perfect setting for this, but in my opinion the story of Sometimes a Great Notion does not suit these themes as well. In many places Ken's themes seemed forced on the story and unrealistic.

For example, I simply did not believe that at the end of the story the bookish, neurotic Leland Stamper would discover his inner Stamper and would join the family to carry on its macho gyppo logging traditions. I also felt that Ken made a mistake when he devoted most of the first 300 pages of the book to Leland, a character that is not at all likable. I have the feeling he spent so much time on Leland in an attempt to actually make him sympathetic. But I never felt sympathy for Leland and was pretty bored by him, and overall I felt very so-so about the book until Ken finally turned the focus away from Leland.

Also, regarding Hank's wife Viv, her decision at the end of the book to "free herself to be herself" seemed forced and unlikely to me. But of course readers can disagree about these things. It's worth noting that this theme is repeated twice earlier in the book by Hank's own mother, who makes two of her own escapes for freedom, one into the woods and one out. And then perhaps a third . . . .

One interesting thing is that Ken's prose in this book is much more diffuse and flowing than it was in Cuckoo's Nest. The style of the book is probably its best feature. It really is beautiful, inventive and always interesting. Even if, like most poetry, it does not always make sense. But it still rushes forward gurgling and rippling magnificent like the waters of the Wakonda Auga (Look!). There are countless gems of description, observation and feeling in the book. I finished it days ago and I still feel like I am right there in the forest with old Henry, Hank and Joby.

I still consider this to be the great American novel. It's not just people from the Northwest who relate to this book. I grew up in Oklahoma, and "Never Give an Inch" was engrained in me as much as Hank Stamper.
The family dynamics are powerful and honest, and Kesey had integrity and clarity. He put effort in this work beyond what I can imagine.
My favorite part is the Mailman delivering the letter!
It may be more for men than women, and perhaps men over forty-five.
The book is about rugged American independence, but even more about strength in your convictions, and this is the lesson our protagonist learns.

Well yes it could use a litle judicious editing, but only a little. Those who object to 'rambling' kind of miss the point. It's not often you get as disoriented in a novel but I found this added to my pleasure, accustomed as I am to a more linear (and antiseptic) idea of plot and structure. You sometimes feel he's gone a bit too far, but there's always some ingenious resolution, generally in the sort of incandescent prose that no-one appears to be capable of nowadays.
His descriptions of a small part of Oregon enchanted me such that I've spent hours on the net (here in Australia) looking for maps that show the Wakonda and surrounds. Of course it doesn't exist - though there's a Wakonda in Wisconsin. Coos Bay, Eugene, Mapleton and Florence seem to be the boundaries of the area and Kesey's son is in Pleasant Hill, so when I finally have the cash to do so, I'll have an idea where to start exploring.
It's a great book but not just because of it's unique poetry and the struggles it descibes between ancient and modern, city and country, collective and individual - it's the incidental pleasures that make it great for me. The lesser characters are more real than many a protagonist - Floyd Evenwrite being perhaps the most memorable. They are all utterly individual but also universal types - everyone knows someone like that.. it might even be me. But there's never bitterness or ridicule; Kesey's heart seems as big as the country he describes.
You'll need a week to do this book justice, but it's worth every minute.

Kesey deftly illustrates the problematic split between the American Man of the Wild and the European Man of Thought which in the idealized American Myth are joined together to form the perfect hybrid, with the gifts of the Indian and the gifts of the Anglo, breaking representatives from both sides down, ultimately giving us a less idealized hero, something made up of the final partnership between the overly thoughtful Eastern brother Leland and the overly physical brother Hank, which, if nothing else suggests that the dignity and the worth of the American spirit is as much as anything a product-or at least could be a product-of its ability to move forward in the face of its exposed weaknesses, not necessarily stoically forward, or cleanly, but forward just the same. .

Although Cuckoo's Nest is a great novel, Sometimes a Great Notion is even more brilliant, even more complex, and even more rewarding. The unique style of intertwined first-person narratives is executed perfectly and is proof of Kesey's inventiveness as a writer and his ability to expand the possibilities of what a novel can achieve. The book is not at all didactic, but you can't help but reflect on your own life when reading it. Also, few writers could take what would seem to be a simple, rather traditional storyline and tell the story in such an imaginative, unorthodox way. This novel was definitely ahead of its time and hopefully is beginning to attain the overdue attention that has eluded it. Kesey was one of the greats.