A Memoir of Ken Kesey at Naropa University 1994 by Keith Kumasen Abbott

Part Three

That July in 1994 turned out to be the hottest month in recorded Colorado history. The heat didn’t help the disposition of anyone at Naropa. On Tuesday afternoon, the day after the performance, students vented their feelings about Twister as the temperature soared. The director of the Summer Writing program, Anne Waldman, was asked who had given the green light to hosting the theatrical production. The official story was that Kesey was only hired as a SWP faculty. No connection, therefore, existed between Twister and the Summer Writing program. Twister had been funded by Naropa’s Development Office. 

During the pre-Twister press conference the Denver Post reported Kesey as saying that what the world needs is to “love our children who are growing up with electronic toys, but without love.” Kesey was also quoted as saying, “Political correctness bullshit….drains energy from more important business,” and “The PC police is everywhere….are always looking for fresh meat.”

After the Wednesday afternoon panel on Dharma Poetics ended, students gathered on the lawn to discuss Twister further. Student labelling of Kesey’s offensive statements as examples of ignorance alternated with assertions that the play was simply lame. Locals were offended that Kesey thought “this retro bullshit” would be tolerated in Boulder. Moral and scholarly retribution was apparently necessary for the infliction of Twister on the literary community.  A faculty member of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics spontaneously removed Kesey’s books from the library. 

Reports around campus were that Kesey’s own forms of self defense were growing more provocative and argumentative. And I still had to give Kesey’s introduction on Thursday night. 

Then a rumor circulated that Kesey was not going to read, but his workshop members would read their collaboration. All this talk calmed no one, least of all me.  I had hoped to ask Kesey to lend his name to a Prose Scholarship at Naropa. Obviously this was no longer a feasible option for the promotion of the Zora Neale Huston scholarship program.  

Learning that Emily Hunter, Naropa’s Development Office director, was hosting a dinner at her house for Kesey, I decided to join at her invitation. Later, after setting up Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s  Spontaneous Calligraphy Haiku Benefit, I arrived at Emily’s old three-story stone house. I was grateful to take a moment to stand on her shady and cool porch. It was also empty and its emptiness was pleasant after the business of the day.

A student of mine joined me on the porch. Rick Jaynes was assigned as the intern for Kesey.  Thereafter several members of Twister’s cast showed up accompanied by the writer Ken Babbs, Kesey’s aide de camp. As I talked with the actors, several of Emily’s boarders arrived back to base. I knew them from when I roomed at the house during previous visiting artist residencies. Our familiar banter relaxed the atmosphere considerably. 

Eventually Kesey arrived, armed with the makings for margaritas. A hefty pitcher was mixed and everyone took to the shade of the front porch. Kesey was holding court. Speaking about a recent photo session in Boulder with an unnamed photographer, Kesey compared this experience to sitting for a portrait by Karsh in New York.  Switching lanes, he then used the two examples to compare their methods with an Oregon photographer friend who shot “mega rolls” of films when taking portraits.

Most of us had not seen any of these portraits. Our contributions were limited. But Kesey’s analysis of techniques behind portraits interested me, especially as he investigated the goals of the artistic process and arrived at some astute observations. During what I judged as an extended pause, I offered a paraphrased edition of Diane Arbus’ reason for rejecting conventional portrait commissions. “It would take five or six hundred exposures to get you without your mask.”

My contribution was met with hostility. Not only by Kesey but also by his entourage, as if I trespassed on the maestro’s territory. I was hit with a distinct feeling of the good old boy wagons closing around their leader. Kesey continued his monologue. 

After Kesey’s death, Larry McMurtry wrote of this habit, tagging his insularity. “Ken’s determination to be the center of attention: he wanted it so badly: so we let him get away with it, and, with one tragic exception, he kept getting away with a good deal of it for the next forty years.” He added, “If the court were sitting, he would play to it, meddle with it, vex it.”

After Emily called to say she was delayed and we should start dinner without her, we all stood up and took a break before sitting back down. I re-introduced myself to Kesey. Earlier that day I visited my friend, novelist William Hjortsberg at the Hotel Boulderado and he advised me that Kesey mistakenly thought Hjortsberg was the author of Mordecai of Monterey. Kesey had praised the book highly. Facing Kesey, I carefully mentioned that I was the author of the novel Mordecai of Monterey. 

Kesey lit up when he heard the title. “You wrote that? I loved that book. I gave Mordecai to all my friends. That was a great plot, having your hero have melanoia, the reverse of paranoia.” 

Suddenly I wasn’t a stranger anymore. Babbs said something favorable about Mordecai and Kesey’s entourage softened a bit towards me. 

At that moment the memory of my publisher returned in my mind’s eye, and this was not a happy memory. My publisher dispensed advance copies to Mordecai to prominent LSD and spiritual gurus  and Deadheads. At the time I told my publisher that dropping the books off the Berkeley pier would generate more publicity than trusting the likes of those reviewers to write blurbs. I assumed those review copies had been wasted because neither Kesey nor anyone else had taken up a pen to scratch out a few words on behalf of Mordecai. 

Part Four