A troupe of seven University professors and local authors publicly read previously unpublished works from world-renowned author and counterculture icon Ken Kesey last night at South Eugene’s Tsunami Books.
University English professor Miriam Gershow joined Max Rayneard, a graduate teaching fellow in the comparative literature program; Creative Writing Program visiting professor Cai Emmons; Lauren Kessler, program director of the School of Journalism and Communication’s Literary Nonfiction Program; and local authors Cecelia Hagen and Paul Calandrino for a freeform exhibition of lesser-known Kesey works. The local literary artists and scholars read excerpts from the late University graduate and ground-breaking 20th-century author’s Ken Kesey Collection, an assemblage of his lifetime’s work including more than 100 cartons of irreplaceable typewritten manuscripts, artwork, collages, photographs and correspondence.
According to Kesey’s wishes, the collection had been stored until now within the Knight Library Special Collections, and the surviving Kesey family members recently decided to put the compilation up for sale. Now the University has an opportunity to purchase the collected works which, according to a press release from Scott Landfield of Tsunami Books, runs “in the $2-5 million range.”
Dean of Libraries Deborah Carver gave a short appeal promptly before the writers and instructors took the stage, voicing the necessity that such a seminal piece of Oregon art and culture remain in Oregon.
“These are materials that exist nowhere else,” Carver said. “They are the hallmark of Oregon literature (and) embody our culture … it’s part of who we are.”
If the library fails to purchase the anthology, Carver warned, Kesey’s legacy could be sold to another university or, worse yet, change hands among private collectors.
“The future scholarship of these resources would be lost forever,” Carver said.
University Libraries Head of Special Collections James Fox gave a similar plea.
“Ken remains one of the most important writers of the 1960s and one of the most important American writers of the 20th century,” Fox said. “Ken always wanted his papers at the University of Oregon, (and) now is the time to acquire them.”
Charles Gurke, a jazz studies graduate student, supplied sonorous saxophone riffs for interludes between readers, giving the spacious bookstore the feel of a downtown New York beatnik jazz bar.
Hagen read a letter Kesey penned to President John F. Kennedy using the intricacies of organized sports as a metaphor for living a moral and compassionate lifestyle.
“Yards are gained for every hungry man fed; for every sick man cured,” Hagen read. “Our children will tally the final score.”
Rayneard, a South African Fulbright scholar currently earning a comparative literature doctorate degree, read one of Kesey’s journal entries in which he self-critically calls his first book, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” published in 1962, the biggest “super colossal failure since Spartacus.” Kesey’s inspiration for “Cuckoo’s Nest,” as it is colloquially called, came while working the night shift at Menlo Park Veterans’ Hospital, often under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs like lysergic acid diethylamide.
While majoring in speech and communications at the University in the mid-’60s, Kesey competed on the wrestling team in the 174-pound weight division, and almost qualified to be on the Olympic team until a debilitating shoulder injury halted his wrestling career.
Last night’s festivities unfolded in the same vein as a previous reading on Dec. 2 of last year at Opus VII, where a similar group of Eugene-area authors presented other collection works as part of a fund-raising effort. At the previous event, Kesey’s widow, Faye Kesey, confirmed that her family and the University library were negotiating the purchase, but neither gave a hint as to what the final price might be.
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Eugene icon’s unpublished works come to light
Daily Emerald
January 20, 2011
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