He was 28 and had the piercing blue eyes and warm smile of Paul Newman-but with not as much hair. When I met him then, Ken shook my hand with a firm grip. In 1963, Ken sent me his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, and soon came to New York for the Broadway opening of the play based on Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Kirk Douglas as McMurphy and Joan Tetzel as Nurse Ratched. He was delighted, and we started working together. I called Guinzburg to tell him I’d like to represent Kesey, who didn’t have an agent, and then got in touch with Ken. In the end, Jack did not write a blurb he felt uncomfortable doing it, perhaps not wanting to get into that arena and all that went with it,and I respected that. His novel was a bold, creative story of what happens in a mental institution-a very daring subject for his time. I read it before passing it on to Jack, and I knew right then that I wanted to work with Kesey.

I had no idea whether Kerouac would help, because I couldn’t remember his having blurbed before, but I didn’t think he would be offended if I asked. A blurb can be particularly helpful if readers feel there is a creative relationship between the two writers. Publishers are always looking for well-known writers to offer positive comments for the book jacket or a press release. Tom had bought the book, but Viking had not yet published it. Each man was an iconoclastic thinker whose writing and philosophy inspired passionate devotion in his readers.īefore I ever met Kesey, Tom Guinzburg, president of Viking Press, called me one day in 1961 to ask whether Kerouac would write a blurb for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey’s first novel. Although they differed in age, personality, and writing styles, they overlapped as writers of their times, and there was room for both. Both of them were my clients, and I liked and admired each of them. If the 1950s and ’60s belonged to Jack Kerouac, then the ’60s and ’70s belonged to Ken Kesey.

Sometimes a great notion by ken kesey