Just to get an idea of how Kesey captures the popular imagination, read LAWRENCE DOWNES’ great travelogue in today’s New York Times on Kesey hiding out from the law in the “cliff-hugging city of Manzanillo” in Mexico. Plus you’ll find out where to stay, what to eat and a thing or two about the bus Further.

“I am in the ocean, doing nothing, just bobbing…I said I was doing nothing, but I’m actually trying to summon somebody: Ken Kesey, novelist, psychedelic prophet, leader of the Merry Pranksters, hero of “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” It was here, on this beach, that he took to the waves as I did, back in 1966…. Kesey is busted for marijuana possession once, twice. Now he faces real time: a bad trip he does not want to take. He parks a truck on a coastal bluff, writes a fake suicide note — Ocean, Ocean, I’ll beat you in the end — then slips into Mexico in a car trunk.

He hides in Puerto Vallarta, then Mazatlán, has B-movie escapes from undercover agents, and ends up in dead-end Manzanillo. [Read the whole thing]

Find Out More about Ken Kesey or share your own remembrances of the man.

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