I had no idea he had published a second book, just two years after Cuckoo’s Nest, and this second novel was what he considered his magnum opus and some regard it as one of the “great American novels”. At least that was what I associated him with. When you hear the name Ken Kesey, what comes to mind is psychedelic drugs and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Sometimes a Great Notion directed by Paul Newman (1971) It is more realistic than One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and neither of the Stamper brothers has the charm of Randle Patrick McMurphy but the book has clearly been more carefully thought out (it took much longer to write) and is more consciously great literature.S ometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey (1964) While it certainly does not have the cachet of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it is a very fine book and one that has aged well. The ending sees the two brothers in a fist fight and, improbably, reconciled.ĭoes it work? If you like Faulkner, you will certainly see where Kesey gets his influences as this is a very Faulknerian novel. The union pressure intensifies and then everything starts to go wrong for Hank, not least of which is his half-brother’s seduction of his, Hank’s, wife. Leland does come back, not least to get his revenge on Hank. However, there is a union strike and Hank needs help so he sends for Leland, whose mother has just killed herself, while he is going through a bad time with drugs and a failed suicide attempt. Hank has a contract to provide logs and he is running a non-union business. Leland and his mother later leave for New York and never return. When he is sixteen, Hank is seduced by his stepmother and young Leland sees the act and is traumatised by it, hating his half-brother. The second, Leland, is the son of Henry’s second wife, a much younger woman, from a wealthy Eastern family. The first, Hank, grows up to be as stubborn as his father. Henry Stamper has been struggling to make a living and has been struggling alone, refusing help from the community and refusing to join the local co-op. It is set in the fictional town of Wakonda in the Oregon logging area.
Despite having the same basic theme – the struggle of the individual against the system – it is (deliberately) far more complex than One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kesey’s second novel has not been nearly a successful as his first.
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