The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1968

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-19

Chapters 20-23

Chapter 24-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 20-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 20 Summary: “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”

After Kesey flees to Mexico, the Acid Tests continue with Babbs as the de facto leader of the Pranksters, but some are unhappy with this direction. Soon a schism develops between “Babbs loyalists versus the had-enough-of-Babbs” (269). Wolfe writes that they missed “the magical cement of Kesey’s charisma” (269). Babbs moves the Tests to Los Angeles, with the first one taking place at Paul Sawyer’s Unitarian church. Hundreds of people show up and even “the straight multitudes” are so far into it that they were now in “The Movie” and “on the bus” (270), Wolfe writes. The next Test takes place on February 12, 1966, in the Watts section of Los Angeles, a place where only five months earlier massive riots had taken place.

The majority of the chapter is a detailed description of the Watts Acid Test provided by Clair Brush, a young writer for the Free Press. Brush, who had never used drugs of any kind, explains that two large trash cans full of Kool-Aid were offered as refreshments and that only later when her trip began did she find out that it had been laced with LSD. While she was afraid of what she was feeling at first, she eventually settled into her trip and began to understand the disorienting lights, music, and films clearly. Overall, Brush’s impression of the Acid Test was that it was “a master production” (277). She describes a scene in which many cops are there but they do not hassle anyone, several friendly African American community members stop by, and the caretaker of the assembly hall allows it all to unfold.

Brush, however, does describe one disturbing element. An unknown girl freaks out, and her manic screaming is amplified when Babbs purposely holds the microphone near her. Babbs dissenters are also unhappy with the practice of dosing people with LSD without telling them. Shortly after the Watts Test, a reporter for Life Magazine comes to interview the Pranksters for a story on the acid scene and to get pictures. When the reporter asks some of them to stick around for individual shots, primarily Cassady and Hagen, they discover that Babbs, Mountain Girl, and a few others had taken the bus and left. Wolfe argues that this prank “took on fundamental meaning,” and those who got pranked “began drifting off” (284-85).

Chapter 21 Summary: “The Fugitive”

Kesey makes it across the border and is living in a tiny apartment in Puerto Vallarta for $80 per month. His paranoia and fear of being captured is overwhelming and likely exacerbated by amphetamines and marijuana. He is there with Zonker and Black Maria, a young girl they picked up in Mazatlán, a beach town popular with American acidheads. While Kesey enjoyed the “fugitive game” of running from the apartment to hide in the jungle until he gets the coded signal that it is safe to return, he cannot help but make a phone call to a friend with the message for Faye that he was safe. Soon, everyone knew that he was safe in Mexico and not dead at all, even the newspapers, one of which ran the headline: “Kesey’s Corpse Having a Ball in Puerto Vallarta” (297). It turns out that the suicide ruse had not fooled the authorities at all; they simply did not know his whereabouts.

Chapter 22 Summary: “Diablo!”

Back in California, Mountain Girl has to stand trial for marijuana possession but gets off with only a $250 fine. Now eight months pregnant, she, Faye, and the kids, Babbs, Gretchen, and Walker, all pile into the bus and head to Mexico to find Kesey. They have a rendezvous with Kesey, Zonker, and Hagen, who has already driven down by himself, planned back in Mazatlán. The trip in the bus is awful and they wait for hours at the rendezvous spot. Finally, Hagen arrives and out of the car steps Kesey, who is introduced as Steve Lamb, a “45-year-old reporter, creep and amateur ornithologist, broadcaster for KSRO, Mighty 590 on your dial” (309).

Chapter 23 Summary: “The Red Tide”

Just as the Merry Pranksters arrive in Mazatlán, so does a red tide, a harmful bloom of plankton that kills fish and releases a foul odor into the air. The local townspeople could not help but associate the two occurrences. The begin referring to the strange Americans in their bus as diablos. Kesey, Faye, and the children and Mountain Girl, Walker, and Black Maria all occupy a house by the beach while Babbs, Gretchen Fetchin, and Babbs’s children lived in an old Purina Chow factory about 50 yards away (313). Just before Mountain Girl gives birth to a little girl she names Sunshine, she and Walker get married so that the child can have Mexican citizenship (317). Their spirits pick up as more Pranksters begin showing up in Mazatlán, including Page Browning, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, and even Cassady. Likewise, Bob Stone, an old friend from Kesey’s Perry Lane days, shows up to do a story on Kesey the fugitive for Esquire Magazine (319). It was here in Mazatlán that Kesey feels cosmic forces telling him that they should move beyond acid.

Chapters 20-23 Analysis

Chapter 20 focuses on the dissipation of Prankster community after Kesey flees to Mexico. Wolfe uses a passage from Hermann Hesse’s novel, The Journey to the East, to describe new feelings of some Pranksters: “From that time, certainty and unity no longer existed in our community, although the great idea still kept us together. How well I remember those first disputes!” (266). Although it was never really discussed, Babbs becomes the de facto leader, and some are unhappy with this and find him to be more cruel and bossy than Kesey. The first Test without Kesey is held at Watts, an unusual decision because only five months prior violent rioting had occurred there.

Much of the chapter consists of a detailed description of the Test given to Wolfe by Clair Brush, a Los Angeles journalist who had never really used drugs of any type before. The actions of Babbs widen the schism between the pro and anti-Babbs factions. Babbs spiked the Kool-Aid with acid without telling anyone, and the anti-Babbs faction finds this unethical and dangerous. Additionally, Babbs exploits a young girl who is in the midst of an acid freakout and screaming madly by purposely broadcasting her cries and screams over the sound system. The anti-Babbs faction finds this stunt unnecessarily cruel. In spite of the serious problems, Wolfe writes that the Watts Test “caused the fast-rising psychedelic thing to explode right out of the underground in a way nobody had dreamed of” (283).

Chapter 23 playfully returns to the theme of Intersubjectivity with an element of literary experimentation. Wolfe writes in the first person plural voice through much of the chapter, providing the thoughts of a collective “we” or “us” when referring to the townspeople of Manzanillo. For example, Wolfe writes that the American “crazies” think it is funny when locals shout “diablo!” and cross themselves at the sight of them, but “we do not” (311). Just as the Pranksters show up in Manzanillo, so does a red tide, a bloom of plankton in the ocean that comes in with the tide and kills fish, releasing a horrible odor into the air. The townspeople are naturally convinced that the American “crazies” have brought in the deadly red tide. The end of the chapter begins to link up Wolfe’s narrative from the flash forward at the book’s beginning, when Kesey explains how an electrical storm in Mexico led to his vision that they should move “beyond acid.”