One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey

I'd heard a lot about Ken Kesey's book: that it's a counterculture classic, that Kesey had based the book on his experiences working as an orderly in an Oregon mental hospital in the early '60s, that the money he made from the book funded the Merry Pranksters. And I'd seen the movie, though I didn't particularly like it. I don't know why, since I've always loved the whole the-one-everyone-calls-crazy-is-actually-the-most-reasonable bit. CATCH-22 is my favorite book, after all. But as movies go, I thought COOL HAND LUKE was the same story, and more engaging. I'll have to read that book some time.

Anyway, the book CUCKOO'S NEST is an interesting read, since it's told from the perspective of Chief Bromden, a paranoid delusional: he describes the machinery that he thinks runs the mental ward, with the staff as robots. And that sometimes they use a fog machine to cloud up the place, so that all the patients stay lost in a haze. But while that makes for some wonderfully detailed observations, it makes for too much distance from the two main characters, Randle Patrick McMurphy and Big Nurse Ratched, so that they only function as elements of the plot, free spirit vs rigorous authority. No insights into why rebels are rebellious, or why authority has to be so rigorous. I guess that's not this story; as it is, it's rightfully a classic depiction of taking on The System, with a set of memorable