Editing Ken Kesey (section)

=== Early life ===
Kesey was born in 1935 in [[La Junta, Colorado]], to dairy farmers Geneva (née Smith) and Frederick A. Kesey.<ref name="NYTobit">[[Christopher Lehmann-Haupt|Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher]]. "[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02EFDC1238F932A25752C1A9679C8B63 Ken Kesey, Author of 'Cuckoo's Nest', Who Defined the Psychedelic Era, Dies at 66]", ''[[The New York Times]]'' (November 11, 2001). Retrieved February 21, 2008.</ref> When Kesey was 10 years old, the family moved to [[Springfield, Oregon]] in 1946.<ref name="oregonianobit" /> Kesey was a champion [[Scholastic wrestling|wrestler]] in high school and college in the {{convert|174|lb|adj=on}} weight division. During high school, Kesey almost qualified to be on the [[United States at the 1956 Summer Olympics|Olympic]] team; however, a serious shoulder injury halted his wrestling career. He graduated from [[Springfield High School (Oregon)|Springfield High School]] in 1953.<ref name="oregonianobit" /> An avid reader and filmgoer, the young Kesey took [[John Wayne]], [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]], and [[Zane Grey]] as his role models (later naming a son Zane) and toyed with [[magic (illusion)|magic]], [[ventriloquism]] and [[hypnotism]].<ref>Macdonald, Gina, and Andrew Macdonald. "Ken Kesey". ''Magill's Survey of American Literature'', Revised Edition (2007): Literary Reference Center. EBSCO.</ref>

While attending the [[University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication]] in neighboring [[Eugene, Oregon|Eugene]] in 1956, Kesey eloped with his high-school sweetheart, [[Oregon State University|Oregon State College]] student Norma "Faye" Haxby, whom he had met in seventh grade.<ref name="oregonianobit" /> According to Kesey, "Without Faye, I would have been swept overboard by notoriety and weird, dope-fueled ideas and flower-child girls with beamy eyes and bulbous breasts."<ref name="esquire">{{cite web |url=http://www.chipbrown.net/articles/kesey.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050318082711/http://www.chipbrown.net/articles/kesey.htm |url-status=usurped |archive-date=March 18, 2005 |title=Ken Kesey Kisses No Ass|date=July 23, 2019}} ''[[Esquire Magazine]]'' (September 1992).</ref> Married until his death, they had three children: Jed, Zane and Shannon.<ref>"Ken Kesey, Author of 'Cuckoo's Nest', Who Defined the Psychedelic Era, Dies at 66", ''[[The New York Times]]'' (November 11, 2001).</ref> Additionally, with Faye's approval, Kesey fathered a daughter, Sunshine Kesey, with fellow [[Merry Pranksters|Merry Prankster]] [[Carolyn Garcia|Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams]]. Born in 1966, Sunshine was raised by Adams and her stepfather, [[Jerry Garcia]].<ref name="intrepmemorial">{{cite web |url=http://www.intrepidtrips.com/kesey/index.html |title=Kesey's friends gather in tribute |first=Cynthia |last=Robins |date=December 7, 2001 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208103351/http://www.intrepidtrips.com/kesey/index.html |archive-date=December 8, 2006}}</ref>

Kesey had a football scholarship for his first year, but switched to the University of Oregon wrestling team as a better fit for his build. After posting a .885 winning percentage in the 1956–57 season, he received the Fred Low Scholarship for outstanding Northwest wrestler. In 1957, Kesey was second in his weight class at the Pacific Coast intercollegiate competition.<ref name="NYTobit" /><ref name="Christensen">{{cite book |title=Acid Christ : Ken Kesey, LSD, and the politics of ecstasy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IEpIVbgz5JsC&q=%22Fred+Lowe+Scholarship%22&pg=PA40 |first=Mark |last=Christensen |location=Tucson, AZ |publisher=Schaffner Press |oclc=701720769 |isbn=978-1-936182-10-7 |page=40 |date=2010 |access-date=December 14, 2014}}</ref><ref name="SpokesmanReviewobit" /> He remains in the top 10 of Oregon Wrestling's all-time winning percentage.<ref name="saveoregonwrestling">{{cite web |title=Top Wrestlers |url=http://www.saveoregonwrestling.org/wrestlers.html |access-date=December 14, 2014 |publisher=Save Oregon Wrestling Foundation |location=Eugene, OR |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141214235225/http://www.saveoregonwrestling.org/wrestlers.html |archive-date=December 14, 2014 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="goducks">{{cite web |url=http://www.goducks.com/pdf3/99425.pdf |date=December 3, 2007 |title=2006–07 Stats, History, Opponent Info – University of Oregon Wrestling |publisher=[[Oregon Ducks|University of Oregon Athletic Department]] |access-date=December 14, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141215001804/http://www.goducks.com/pdf3/99425.pdf |archive-date=December 15, 2014}}</ref>

A member of [[Beta Theta Pi]] throughout his studies, Kesey graduated from the University of Oregon with a [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] in speech and communication in 1957. Increasingly disengaged by the playwriting and screenwriting courses that comprised much of his major, he began to take literature classes in the second half of his collegiate career with James B. Hall, a cosmopolitan alumnus of the [[Iowa Writers' Workshop]] who had previously taught at [[Cornell University]] and later served as provost of College V at the [[University of California, Santa Cruz]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=JhXmEYWHDHYC&q=james+b.+hall+university+of+oregon&pg=PA138 "Hall, James B(yron)"], ''International Who's Who in Poetry'', 2004, p. 138.</ref> Hall took on Kesey as his protégé and cultivated his interest in literary fiction, introducing Kesey (whose reading interests were hitherto confined to [[science fiction]]) to the works of [[Ernest Hemingway]] and other paragons of [[literary modernism]].<ref>Jeff Baker, [http://blog.oregonlive.com/books/2008/05/james_b_hall_writer_teacher.html "James B. Hall: Writer, teacher"], ''The Oregonian/OregonLive'', May 14, 2008.</ref> After the last of several brief summer sojourns as a struggling actor in [[Los Angeles]], Kesey published his first short story ("First Sunday of September") in the ''Northwest Review'' and successfully applied to the highly selective [[Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation|Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship]] for the 1958–59 academic year.

Unbeknownst to Kesey, who applied at Hall's request, the maverick literary critic [[Leslie Fiedler]] (then based at the [[University of Montana]]) successfully importuned the regional fellowship committee to select the "rough-hewn" Kesey alongside more traditional fellows from [[Reed College]] and other elite institutions.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/toogoodtobetruel00winc_0 |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/toogoodtobetruel00winc_0/page/186 186] |quote=ken kesey woodrow wilson. |title=Too Good to Be True |publisher=University of Missouri Press |access-date=December 14, 2014 |isbn=978-0-8262-6277-6 |last1=Winchell |first1=Mark Royden |year=2002}}</ref> Because he lacked the prerequisites to work toward a traditional master's degree in English as a communications major, Kesey elected to enroll in the non-degree program at [[Stanford University]]'s Creative Writing Center that fall. While studying and working in the Stanford milieu over the next five years, most of them spent as a resident of Perry Lane (a historically bohemian enclave next to the university golf course), he developed intimate lifelong friendships with fellow writers [[Ken Babbs]], [[Larry McMurtry]], [[Wendell Berry]], [[Ed McClanahan]], [[Gurney Norman]] and [[Robert Stone (novelist)|Robert Stone]].<ref name="oregonianobit" />

During his initial fellowship year, Kesey frequently clashed with center director [[Wallace Stegner]], who regarded him as "a sort of highly talented illiterate" and rejected Kesey's application for a departmental [[Stegner Fellowship]] before permitting his attendance as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Reinforcing these perceptions, Stegner's deputy [[Richard Scowcroft]] later recalled that "neither Wally nor I thought he had a particularly important talent."<ref name="books.google.com">Philip L. Fradkin, [https://books.google.com/books?id=pVD89rfGvQYC&q=%22stegner%22+%22kesey%22+%22pay%22&pg=PA131 ''Wallace Stegner and the American West'']</ref> According to Stone, Stegner "saw Kesey... as a threat to civilization and intellectualism and sobriety" and continued to reject Kesey's Stegner Fellowship applications for the 1959–60 and 1960–61 terms.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jrebNwURn28C&q=applied&pg=PA251 |title=Wallace Stegner |access-date=December 14, 2014 |isbn=978-0-8032-2537-4 |last1=Benson |first1=Jackson J. |year=2009|publisher=U of Nebraska Press }}</ref>

Nevertheless, Kesey received the prestigious $2,000 Harper-Saxton Prize for his first novel in progress (the oft-rejected ''Zoo'') and audited the graduate writing seminar—a courtesy nominally accorded to former Stegner Fellows, although Kesey only secured his place by falsely claiming to Scowcroft that his colleague (on sabbatical through 1960) "had said that he could attend classes for free"—through the 1960–61 term.<ref name="books.google.com" /> The course was initially taught that year by [[Viking Press]] editorial consultant and [[Lost Generation]] ''eminence grise'' [[Malcolm Cowley]], who was "always glad to see" Kesey and fellow auditor [[Tillie Olsen]]. Cowley was succeeded the following quarter by the Irish short-story specialist [[Frank O'Connor]]; frequent spats between O'Connor and Kesey ultimately precipitated his departure from the class.<ref>Cowley, M. (1976). [https://www.proquest.com/docview/1299909780 "Ken Kesey at Stanford"], ''Northwest Review'', 16(1), 1.</ref> While under Cowley's tutelage, he began to draft and workshop a manuscript that evolved into ''[[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (novel)|One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest]]''.

Reflecting upon this period in a 1999 interview with [[Robert K. Elder]], Kesey recalled, "I was too young to be a [[beatnik]], and too old to be a hippie."<ref name="salon2001">{{cite web |title=Down on the peacock farm |url=http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2001/11/16/kesey99/index1.html |year=2001 |work=[[Salon Magazine]] |access-date=June 12, 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081201235830/http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2001/11/16/kesey99/index1.html |archive-date=December 1, 2008}}</ref>