Is The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test one of the All-TIME 100 Best Nonfiction Books? TIME thinks so. Check it out.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

By Bryan Walsh | August 30, 2011 | +

Author: Tom Wolfe

Year Released: 1968

Contrary to popular opinion — and maybe his own as well — Tom Wolfe did not invent New Journalism. There were Gay Talese and Jimmy Breslin and, before them, any number of American writers who shoved nonfiction into the realm of literature. But it was Wolfe — the Southern dandy in the cream-colored suits — who truly turbocharged journalism with 1968′s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Wolfe followed author Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters through their LSD-soaked bus trips back and forth across America at the very high point of the Sixties.

The characters stand out: the veteran Beat Neal Cassady, at the wheel for one last road trip; Mountain Girl, the gentle-souled Amazonian; and Kesey himself, at the center of it all and yet strangely unknowable. But the real star, of course, is Wolfe’s kandy-colored prose, as pulsing with life as any novelist’s. “Somebody has to be the pioneer and leave the marks for others to follow,” writes Wolfe, referring to Kesey and his band. But Wolfe could have been describing himself and the legion of nonfiction writers, so rarely his equal, who would follow in his wake.

Next: The Executioner's Song

Related Topics: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe

Melissa

Reblogged this on Swamp of Boredom and commented:
I’m reblogging this for my own reference and also to share with my readers (all 34 of you;)). Since the release of the 1001 Books App on Tuesday, I’ve been book list crazy. Since I like non-fiction – especially non-fiction centered on historical events and people, not so much current people – and have read a couple of excellent non-fiction books in the last year (Only Yesterday, Empire of the Summer Moon) I wondered if there was a list of recommended non-fiction books. Of course there is. I found one from the Guardain (UK) that is, obviously, geared towards British readers and that, unlike Time’s list, encompasses all non-fiction ever written. This list from Time consists of books only since Time began publishing, 1923. There are a few that don’t interest me at all and the biography choices focus too heavily on women and African Americans, IMO, but overall the list is excellent.
Enjoy!