Ken kesey early life
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Content warning: mentions of drug use.
Ken Kesey: biography
| Ken Kesey's Biography | |
| Birth: | 17th September 1935 |
| Death: | 10th November 2001 |
| Father: | Frederick A. Kesey |
| Mother: | Geneva Smith |
| Spouse/Partners: | Norma 'Faye' Haxby |
| Children: | 3 |
| Cause of death: | Complications after a liver surgery to remove a tumor |
| Famous Works: |
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| Nationality: | American |
| Literary Period: | Postmodernism, countercultural |
Ken Kesey was born on 17th September 1935 in La Junta, Colorado. His parents were dairy farmers. When he was eleven, his family moved to Springfield, Oregon in 1946, where his parents set up an organisation called Eugene Farmers Collective. He was raised Baptist.
Kesey had a typically 'All-American' childhood in which he and his brother Joe enjoyed rugged outdoors pursuits such as fishing and hunting, as well as sports such as wrestling, boxing, football and racing. He was a star wrestler in high school, and almost qualified for the Olympic team, but was prevented from doing so by a
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Ken Kesey, the older of two sons, was born on September 17, 1935, in La Junta, Colorado. In 1946 the family moved to Springfield, Oregon, where Kesey spent several years on his family's farm. He was raised in a religious household where he developed a great appreciation for Christian fables and a Christian ethical system. During high school and later in college, Kesey was a champion wrestler, setting long-standing state records in Oregon. Voted "most likely to succeed" in high school, Kesey was an unlikely candidate to become one of the more controversial figures of his age and one of the leading figures of the counterculture.
After high school, Kesey eloped with Faye Haxby, his high school sweetheart, and they had three children together: Jed, Zane, and Shannon. Kesey attended the University of Oregon with a degree in Speech and Communications. He also received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to enroll in the Creative Writing program at Stanford. His classmates in the program included Robert Stone, Larry McMurty, Ken Babbs, and Wendell Berry, all of whom would go on to
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Ken Kesey
(1935-2001)
Who Was Ken Kesey?
Ken Kesey attended Stanford University and later served as an experimental subject and aide in a hospital, an experience that led to his 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. That book was followed by Sometimes a Great Notion and several works of nonfiction that detailed Kesey's transformation from novelist to guru of the hippie generation.
Early Life
Ken Elton Kesey was born on September 17, 1935, in La Junta, Colorado. He was raised by his dairy farmer parents in rugged Springfield, Oregon, where he grew to be a star wrestler and football player. At the University of Oregon, he also developed an interest in theater but was awarded a Fred Lowe Scholarship for his accomplishments in wrestling. Kesey married his high school girlfriend Norma Faye Haxby in 1956, and after briefly considering a career as an actor, relocated to Palo Alto, California, when he won a scholarship to the graduate program in writing at Stanford University.
'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'
While attending Stanford, in 1960 Kesey volunteered as a
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