User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Back in the day, I worked in the radio industry, both on air and behind the scenes as producer for a call-in talk show. There's a saying in the business I learned during that time - having a "big voice".
A big voice is one that has depth and breadth, one that reminds you of James Earl Jones, Johnny Cash or that guy who does all the movie trailers. Those voices mesmerize, command, practically swallow you whole.
Well, just like someone can have a big voice, I believe there are "big books" - and this is one of them. This book is so big, I'm having a hard time wrapping my arms around it in order to write a coherent review. Set in 1960s Pacific Northwest (Oregon, to be precise), this big, shaggy bear of a book tells the story of a unionized logging town in the midst of a tense strike, and the Stamper family, who buck the strike by working independently, taking the union's work.
Hard to believe that 650 odd pages about logging and striking could keep my attention. I'm a gal who typically loves economy, brevity, presenting one's point on the tip of a blade. But this mammoth drew me in, almost from the first.
Most people know Ken Kesey because of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which is fabulous, both book and film) but this, his second novel, didn't seem to make as much of a splash. It sort of broke Kesey's heart at the time. He stopped writing for the better part of a decade afterward. I wondered what caused the somewhat underwhelming reception, and I think maybe because it's such a "big book". What makes it so big?
* 650 pages, for starters.
* It's got a vast bevy of characters too, and each one gets to speak from their own point of view. That means switching up of point of view often, nay, constantly - sometimes three times in a paragraph. Yup.
* Nature is huge. Beauteous and also dangerous. Always threatening, whether the numbing cold, or a rushing flood, or the crack of a giant, falling tree. Having recently moved back to the wet coast (Vancouver, BC), I truly appreciated the vivid way Kesey evokes this part of the world.
* The family drama, which rises to Shakespearian or Biblical proportions, or maybe even Greek mythology.
* A few "big" scenes. These scenes are breathtaking, epic, cinematic, kick you in the gut. You don't read these types of scenes every day. You just don't.
So yeah, a big book. Some parts might have gone on longer than I would have liked, but then I was rewarded with those magnificent scenes, and pulled along by that story. The changing POV was unusual so took a little time to adjust to, but after a while became quite natural. And it achieved what a changing point of view, when done well, achieves: the reader's allegiance changes too, page by page, because of a deeper understanding of each character. Soon, nobody's the bad guy. This understanding spreads in a broader sense, toward humanity. That's a beautiful thing, if you can stay there, rest there a while.
It's a very male dominated book, drenched in testosterone. The women don't get nearly the depth or air-time that the male characters do. But, I forgive that, because the book is a big questioning of the whole idea of manliness, or what it means to be tough.
But if the strength ain't real, I recall thinking the very last thing that day, before I finally passed out, then the weakness sure enough is. Weakness is true and real. I used to accuse the kid of faking his weakness. But faking proves the weakness is real. Or you wouldn't be so weak as to fake it. No, you can't ever fake being weak. You can only fake being strong...It's a masterpiece, worthy of more attention. It's an ambitious, open armed, far reaching labour of love. It's like an opera - long, but just as soul-soaring. Read it.
So now, I'll stop, before this becomes a "big review" (and not in a good way)!
Rating: really liked it
"
Sometimes I lives in the country
Sometimes I lives in town
Sometimes I take a great notion
To jump into the river an’ drown "
I know little about Oregon State, what little I do know is that it's damp almost all of the time, has it's fair share of trees and woodland, and it's where 'The Goonies' and 'Stand by Me' were filmed, and River Phoenix was born there.
Ken Kesey's 'Sometimes a Great Notion' is quite simply a contemporary American masterpiece, set on the rain soaked Oregon coast, the fictional town of Wakonda early in the 1960's. The story, if you could call it that, is surrounding a logging family (The Stampers), who cut and procure trees for a local mill in opposition to striking, unionized workers. They live in an old house built out on the river and pretty much keep to them selves, and due to current circumstances are the scourge of the town. I wouldn't exactly call them hillbilly folk, but they're not far of. There is the old croaky father Henry, sons Hank, and Leland (recently returning from the east coast), and hank's partner Viv.
The bitter strike is at the centre of the novel, which sees the labour force demanding the same pay but for less hours due to the on going problem of less demand in this market. The Stampers who own and operate their own company decide to continue logging to supply the regionally owned mill, but cause fury with the locals. A Union man is called to town (Mr Dreager) to try and solve the dispute, the Stampers play dirty and won't budge. The Striking details remain largely in the background. You are left wondering on certain points. But the story truth be told is all about the day to day lives of the Stampers, they completely steal the show. A huge chunk of the narrative takes place within the walls of the Stampers residents, and has an almost voyeuristic sensibility, and conversations between family members can seem to last for tens of pages at a time. Now I made reference to hillbillies, and the dialogue here takes some getting used to. There is lots of slang talk and derogatory comments made throughout, even the 'N' word gets used a lot, but this simply reiterates the "off the beaten track" type of people we are dealing with, living out on the river in seclusion, they take to hunting and setting traps for animals,as a way to provide for food when getting into town is difficult.
At 715 pages things do eb and flow here and there, and can get slightly tiresome, but that's just me being picky, because on the whole it's length is something that the further you go on the less of a problem it becomes, you become totally involved in this damp and dreary community your feelings for certain characters change from hatred to that of pity.
The novel's multiple characters speak sequentially in the first person, seemingly without alerting the reader to whom they are listening to?, this can get confusing as narrative will skip from one to the other without any idea of knowing so, again you just get used to it over time.
If I could sum up the Stampers in one word that would be 'Stubborn', the house for example appears to be about to fall apart at any time, the interiors are awash with er...mess, they are living so far in the past, but nothing and no one will get them to change, they firmly hold their ground!
The most intelligent of the pack is Leland, who returns to Wakonda after years spent on the east coast with his mother, he is attracted to Hank's Viv, and late on in the novel the two will come to loggerheads, there is also an incident that could see their resolve shattered, and the last 100 pages or so are set up for what appears a climactic and tense finale, but going on the overall nature of past proceedings, don't expect some huge grand spectacle of a finish, you will be let down. The slow pace stays for the whole duration.
Another important aspect of Notion is the weather. It rains. It rains constantly; even when it's dry it's still wet and damp. The river swells, the town has puddles the size of small lakes, and residents continually shake their caps of rain water, have constant colds, and foul stinking attitudes they carry around forever! Kesey brings the whole place to life, in such vivid and articulated way, this is the great strength of the Great Notion, and has to rank up there with the best contemporary novels of all time! I am still mystified why this seems to have gone into obscurity; even around the time of first publication: was is marketed badly?, or did people simply not like it? Not sure. All that matters to me is my own unforgettable reading experience of reading it.
An astonishing masterpiece! Talking of the great American novel then this has to be up there with the best of them.
Rating: really liked it
after reading: Oh my. Oh my goodness what an incredible book. Absolutely stunning.
Sometimes A Great Notion (which, btw, gets its title from the Ledbelly song "Goodnight Irene") is the story of the Stamper family, renegade loggers in Oregon in maybe the fifties. It's an incredible family—Henry, the patriarch, the crazed, stubborn old goat who started the logging business; his son Hank (stoic, serious, earnest, proud, charming) and Hank's cousin Joe Ben (brimming with enthusiasm and joy and good will), who now run the company; Hank's gorgeous and quiet and wonderful wife Viv; and Hank's much younger half-brother Leland, an intellectual and a weakling who fled the rough workaday life as soon as he was old enough, and now lives in New York where he is finishing college. There has been a lifelong and mostly unspoken rivalry between the brothers, but because the Stampers have run afoul of the logging union, Hank and Joe Ben write to Leland, asking him to come back home to help make a big run.
The other important thing is that the entire town despises the Stampers. Currently all the loggers are on strike, but the Stamper clan is still working, and because of that, they are preventing the strike from ending, since there's no reason for the company that wants the lumber to negotiate with the union when the Stampers are doing all the same work. Everyone has always hated the Stampers anyway, because they are big and strong and stubborn and put everyone else to shame, and now the whole town is seriously turning against them.
Now look. That encapsulation is not only horribly unjust (a book of this magnitude deserves much more than a paltry surface summation like that), but also is likely to turn off your average modern reader. I know, I know, an entire novel about logging in the country? And a boring union struggle with a bunch of backwoods hicks? It wouldn't have caught my attention either.
But listen, there is
so much more than that here.
Above all, this is a book about
people, filled with some of the most fascinating and deeply drawn characters I have come across in a terribly long time. Even the supporting cast have rich backstories, like the town prostitute (Indian Jenny) who calls men to her bed by throwing clamshells and then buying them drinks; Biggy Newton, the overgrown class bully who has been beating up (and getting beaten up by) Hank since they were in school together; Les Gibbons, an old drunk made bitter by a life of grudges; Boney Stokes, Henry's alleged best friend, who wishes for his downfall more than anyone who hates him; Teddy the fat bartender who thinks he knows everything about the human condition as he waters down all the drinks.
And those are just the
incidental characters. I haven't said hardly anything about Hank, Joe Ben, Viv, Leland, and Henry, because if I start writing about them, I'll end up transcribing the entire six-hundred-page book here. The complicated ways these people love each other, the intricate ways they fuck each other up... it is so intense, so believable, so
real. It made me remember that one of the things we've lost in our pomo irony age is the serious emotional connection that it is possible to make with earnest, deep characters. Because I will tell you right now, this book made me cry. Not just cry but
sob. In
public. On the fucking
subway. It crept into my dreams, the way really intense movies do, I kept repeating lines to myself and my friends, re-examining scenes I had read days ago to smooth them out and polish them and find in them more beauty and meaning and truth.
And listen: Kesey is not without his own literary machinations. For example, he manages to tell the story from several points of view. At
once. As in, in the same paragraph there would be three "I"s: one in italics, one in parentheses, and one in regular type. But where with a modern-day irnoicist, this might come of as metafictional gimicry, here it felt not only smooth and effective, but
necessary. Because everyone is thinking all the time, right? And all these characters have rich internal lives to match their rich outer ones, and so a major climactic scene
needs to be told by everyone at once, just like it happens. Each narrative augments and enhances the other, making for a stunningly complete picture.
One drawback I did notice was the womenfolk. These stoic, complicated, multifaceted men were unfortunately not graced by the presence of equally complex women; most of the ladies in the book were shrewish, mute, or dead (though the dead were often even more powerful forces than the living). The only truly developed gal was Viv, and she was not nearly as thoroughly done as any of the men. One of her central decisions, one of the axes on which the entire plot turned, I found completely unfounded, unjustified, and almost insulting.
But. Ultimately that was not nearly enough to seriously detract from this utterly amazing story. I cannot remember the last time I was so thoroughly knocked out by a novel. I cannot
believe how much this affected me.
mid-read: Ok, so this is seriously weird. While reading this book for pleasure, I am also proofing an erotic vampire romance novel for work (I wish that was a lie). And you would think that the stark contrast between, you know, amateur silliness and a serious work of literature would bring this book into absolute focus. And that's true, of course. But what's seriously blowing my mind is that there are all sorts of
parallels between the two books, in odd and creepy ways. Both heroes are ruled by revenge, in ways that warp and twist their minds, ways that are meditated upon constantly, with, um, predictable and harrowing results, respectively (it's obvious which is which, though, right?). Anyway and
also, the sections of each that I'm up to today
both take place on Halloween. Maybe that's a small coincidence, but I think it's crazy.
old: This is one of my parents' favorite books. I read it in high school, and wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped. Soon I'll read it again, and see who was wrong, the 'rents or my younger self.
Rating: really liked it
Sometimes a Great Notion is very polyphonic, the story is narrated by many…
The novel is a wicked and extravagant black comedy cleverly disguised as a family and social drama.
Look… Reality is greater than the sum of its parts, also a damn sight holier. And the lives of such stuff as dreams are made of may be rounded with a sleep but they are not tied neatly with a red bow.
An estranged son, bent on taking revenge upon his older brother, reunites his hardheaded family…
And at times, almost certainly, a little sneak of memory would slip past your whipping boy and you would be whacked just as hard as ever by that joker’s bladder of reality, of pain and heartache and hassle and death. You might hide in some Freudian jungle most of your miserable life, baying at the moon and shouting curses at God, but at the end, right down there at the damned end when it counts… you would sure as anything clear up just enough to realize the moon you have spent so many years baying at is nothing but the light globe up there on the ceiling, and God is just something placed in your bureau drawer by the Gideon Society. Yes, I sighed again, in the long run insanity would be the same old cold-hearted drag of too solid flesh, too many slings and arrows, and too much outrageous fortune.
Sometimes a Great Notion is a book of collisions: reason against foolishness, spirit against flesh, sanity against madness, individual against community, man against nature… one against many.
It took no more than that first day to bring back all his faults; sparse though our communication had been it had taken only a few seconds at each exchange of words to convince me that he was crass, bigoted, wrongheaded, hypocritical, that he substituted viscera for reason and confused his balls with his brains, and that he was in many ways the epitome of the kind of man I regarded as most dangerous to my kind of world, and certainly for these reasons should I seek his destruction.
But even if one wins, victory is an ambivalent thing… a stick with two ends… a coin with two sides…
Man is a gregarious being and herd either makes one conform or destroys one.
Rating: really liked it
I didn’t want to read this one. Its long. Its by some acidhead hippie. Its only famous because Kesey is famous. He has fans because of his lifestyle, not his literary merit. Its about a group of loggers on strike? Ugh, sounds boring. But I gave it a shot and was blown away….
The storyline didn’t grab me right away but Kesey’s writing did. He had talent and this book is creatively ambitious. Every character has a turn at first person voice and the speaker can switch several times, sometimes even within a single paragraph. Seems confusing but I rarely had to reread because Kesey is that good. I am amazed that anyone would ever have the arrogance to write this way and even more amazed that someone could pull it off so smoothly.
Some beautiful sections of writing. I loved the paragraph when he describes a canyon along the river where one can hear clear echoes such that one can sing along with yourself to tunes like Row, row, your boat…but the description slips into the relentless of an echo, how its sounds cant adjusted but that you must adjust your new words to it as you sing. The story as well as a circular effect so that after I closed on the last words; I promptly reread the first 20.
The storyline develops from a struggle between two brothers to the struggle of a town to a struggle in each of us and the true meaning of what it is to have “strength” and “weakness”.
The spirit of the American working person and the frontier is captured. When the town finally thinks it has crushed Hank Stamper, there is only superficial joy, because his spirit was the spirit that had all given up too long ago.
Criticism: characters were a bit simple. Not a lot of confusion as to what each felt and why. Just the same, they aren’t not flat but very real, just a little simple.
Question: Why didn’t Kesey ever manage to be that good again? Did he ever even try again?
Rating: really liked it
To know a thing you have to trust what you know, and all that you know, and as far as you know in whatever direction your knowing drags you.One of the things I know is that Ken Kesey was a one of a kind writer, who knew his craft and invented his own style. Beginning this book can be off-putting, because there isn’t a narrator for the story--Kesey bounces around inside the heads of a dozen characters, switching without warning from one to the other, and making you dizzy with trying to sort out whose thoughts you are following. He also does nothing as mundane as telling a story in a linear fashion, oh no, he bounces time frames almost as much as he does characters in the beginning. But read on! When you have settled into the rhythm of what he is doing, he begins to tell a more linear tale and it becomes obvious to you who is speaking and why it is important not to follow this story through the eyes of only one character or even an omniscient being.
I found his descriptions and language beautiful. It was as close to being on an Oregon river in the winter as I would ever want to come; it was closer than I would ever want to get to a logging operation. The prose is beautiful, but there is also a touch of the poetic in his writing, as I think is demonstrated in this passage:
But the breath of memory still plucks such instances, setting the whole web shaking. People fade up the stairs, but to dream of each other’s dreams; of days coming gone and nights past coming; of hard sun-rods crisscrossing back and forward across outspreading circles of water, meaningless-seeming…The Stamper family are loggers and rugged individualists. They don’t ask for anything and they give little thought to anyone outside their family circle. Henry Stamper is the patriarch of the clan and son, Hank is the heart and the driving force. When all the logging operations unionize and go out on strike, the Stamper’s non-union business takes up the major contract in the area, defying the strikers. Everyone is against them; the town is against them. Youngest son, Leland, is a college kid, raised in the city, away from this world, since the age of twelve. He has a decided problem with his older brother, and much of the angst and tension is heightened by the silent duel Lee is constantly fighting in his mind. He has come home, ostensibly to help with fulfilling the contract, but mostly for the personal satisfaction of proving he is able to dethrone his older brother. As if it were needed to add to the edginess, there is a woman involved.
This is a very long book and not a wasted page in it, with themes that are as large as the outdoorsmen who inhabit it. Sibling rivalry, individuals vs. organizations, brotherhood and the love between men who share daily dangers, how the needs of a woman differ from those of a man, and what love really is anyway, play out in the unwinding of the novel.
For there is always a sanctuary more, a door that can never be forced, a last inviolable stronghold that can never be taken, whatever the attack; your vote can be taken, you name, you innards, or even your life, but that last stonghold can only be surrendered. And to surrender it for any reason other than love is to surrender love.If you like books that literally transport you to another world and hold you there, this book is for you. I thought about it after I turned the lights out at night. It haunted my sleep and distracted me from my duties. It consumed me. And, it made me twitch with the restlessness of these men and shake and worry for their safety from the environment, from the people around them, and from one another. This is a masterpiece.
Rating: really liked it
Hands down the most underappreciated American novel ever! I think it should be up there with "Moby Dick" "Grapes of Wrath" etc. In fact, I think it is better. it's hard to imagine Ken Kesey, hippy acid head that he was would be able to so write so poignantly and beautifully but he absolutely pulled it off, his other famous novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" doesn't even hold a candle to "Sometimes a Great Notion" It's rather long and it is written in a "Faulkneresque" style where POV's switch back and forth but you get used to the rhythm you can easily sense the flow between characters points of view. You'll find each character equally dynamic so you don't have to worry about one characters story being duller than another’s. I'll leave it at this, if you don't read this book before you die, you are missing out.
Rating: really liked it
If V. Woolf had
a) grown up within sight of the Coastal Range, and
b) enormous, swinging testes,
then this book would be sold in a 3-pack with "Mrs Dalloway" and "The Waves" today. It's such literatoor, but it's so masculine and so blue-collar also. God I love it. The beautiful, funny slang; the creepy, right-on descriptions of the menacing landscape... It's got man vs. land and man vs. man. Who could ask for anything more?
Rating: really liked it
Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion (Bantam Windstone, 1964)
I really, really wanted to like this book. An underread novel by an acknowledged American master of letters with a core of fans who consider it one of the best novels of the last century. What could be better? Well, to put it in as few words as possible, Kesey's writing style.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest works, and works so well, because it's tight. It's terse. It says what needs to be said. Kesey knows what he wants to say and says it. You get the idea. It's been compared to A Christmas Carol a number of times, and with very good reason. But if Cuckoo is Kesey's Christmas Carol, then Sometimes a Great Notion is Kesey's Bleak House. It's long-winded, rambling, incoherent, and could easily have lost three hundred pages from its final length without anyone noticing anything had gone; when your main character doesn't get to the place where all the action is happening until page 88, and still hasn't gotten his baggage from the bus terminal eight miles away fifty pages later, you know there's a whole lot of extraneous material therein. And while that makes sense within Kesey's chosen stylistic framework (the story is told by a
woman flipping through a photograph album), there's just too much of the rambling and not enough plot advancement. It's like being stuck in a whole novel of Melville's two-hundred-page cessation of action in Moby Dick. If you thought that was painfully unreadable, Sometimes a Great Notion may well send you into apoplectic fits.
Rating: really liked it
This is a BIG story. It’s a complex story that studies a family’s relationships. It is complete with masculine gruffness, hard-driving work in the logging business and a family willing to stand for what they believe in. The Stampers are a rough-hewn, tough and self-reliant clan of loggers who live in a house situated on the powerful Wakonda Auga River in Oregon. The river is an ever-present force that threatens livelihoods with its unpredictability and constantly eroding banks. The patriarch of the Stamper family, Henry, has forged the homestead in his stubbornness and imprinted upon his son Hank to live the family’s motto of “Never Give an Inch”.
Hank Stamper epitomizes the rugged, courageous, strong-willed and fearless personality-type. He is loyal to his family and a prime example of self-sufficiency. His work ethic alone leads the family when the going gets really tough. Pressures begin to build up from the local union for the Stampers to conform and support the strike against the lumber company. Nevertheless, Hank’s family-run, non-union business begins filling a contract with the lumber company to the bitterness of the community. Without the backing of the Stampers, the union feels betrayed and the strike continues on. Hank’s unyielding determination is one of the driving forces of his decisions. He fights for what the family believes in to the end.
Hank’s younger brother Leland is completely his opposite. Taken away from the logging life to grow up on the east coast where his mother was from, Lee became the scholar and intellectual. When he is asked by the Stamper family to return to Wakonda to help fulfill the contract, Lee dredges up the old sibling rivalry. He returns set on revenge for some instances in the past that have been brewing for 12 years. Lee puts himself in the middle of a family he barely knows and a business he knows nothing about while at the same time trying to figure out a way to bring Hank down a notch or two. Lee, in the meantime, learns some important lessons about what it means to be a Stamper.
I have to mention how challenging this novel was to get started. Kesey’s prose is thoughtful and purposeful but the technique he chose took some getting used to. This 628 page story seems to ramble back and forth jumping from character to character. Keeping track of the point of view took some effort because the shifts came without any warning. He uses parentheses and italics to help offset these constant changes and omits chapter breaks as well, but once I got the feel for his meandering method, the story finally started to come together and really take flight. One of the things that actually helped me was the Hoopla audio. I’m not one that listens to audio but with a printed text copy to read along with it, my sanity was saved and I could distinguish the points of view so much easier with the audio.
This is Kesey’s masterpiece, full of thoughtful themes that bring forth some very intellectual discussions. What is it about independence, self-sufficiency and individualism? Kesey based this ambitious work on these ideas and created an unforgettable, male-dominated family in an unforgiving, beautiful setting. My time spent on the Oregon Coast was worthwhile. Seeing the rugged terrain and experiencing the back-breaking logging work through Kesey’s eyes, I know the journey through the pages was authentic in every way. Getting to witness the fortitude and nerve it takes to survive in a world such as this, puts a new perspective on strength and manliness.
But if the strength ain't real, I recall thinking the very last thing that day, before I finally passed out, then the weakness sure enough is. Weakness is true and real. I used to accuse the kid of faking his weakness. But faking proves the weakness is real. Or you wouldn't be so weak as to fake it. No, you can't ever fake being weak. You can only fake being strong…
Rating: really liked it
I must admit that the premise for this novel – a strike in the logging industry during the 1960s – didn’t exactly set my heart aflutter with excitement, but I loved Kesey’s writing so much in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that I really wanted to give this one a chance. That turned out to be an excellent decision.
The crux of this novel, to me, was the complicated relationships that we have with one another and the deep rooted hurt that lives quietly within us. Our parents, our siblings, our spouses. What is it like to feel intense hatred for someone and be cursed to incurably love them at the same time? What do you do? If you’ve ever had a less than perfect relationship with a family member, if you’ve ever experienced the sting of betrayal from a parent, if you’ve ever left home and returned a stranger unable to relate to your kin or if you’ve spent your life trying to escape only to come full circle… you will relate to Leland Stamper.
Kesey’s writing blows me away. The novel is dense and scattered and the language is rich and beautiful. The narrative switches between different character’s points of view constantly and several times within one page. It took some getting used to but once I acclimatized, I liked it. Kesey seamlessly illustrated the way every moment is seen through different eyes and interpreted differently. A conversation, a decision, the smallest gesture - nothing is absolute. Everything we think we know is just a result of our perception.
This novel is deceptively intricate and contains keenly observed power struggles between brothers, between white collar and blue collar, between workers and bosses, between husbands and wives, between dreams and cold hard reality and a twist on a good ole fashioned Oedipus complex thrown in for good measure. It’s about the consequences of our decisions and the way one moment can change the rest of one’s life. It’s about absolution and letting go. It’s about love.
This book is heartbreaking, engrossing and very underrated.
Rating: really liked it
You know how George R.R. Martin changes narrative voices between chapters? Well, this book does that, but within paragraphs. In the first hundred pages, there were a few paragraphs that had, internally, four different perspectives. And I thought, what have I gotten myself into? Is this pretentious? Is it precious?
And more to the point, can I put up with this for 700 pages?
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Rating: really liked it
Magnificent! This underappreciated novel is an American classic every bit as epic as East of Eden and intricate as Moby-Dick, with characters so complex and real to me that I’m half expecting word to arrive soon from them, telling me what they’ve got up to since the story ended. Ken Kesey brings the Pacific Northwest to life. You’ll smell the spicy rhododendrons and feel the mist weighing down your hair as you read.
It’s the Oregon Coast, 1961. Logging country.
“… on the Peaceful and Promising Wakonda Auga River, Where (the pamphlets had informed him) A Man Can Make His Mark. Where A Man Can Start Anew. Where (the pamphlets said) The Grass Is Green, And The Sea Is Blue, And The Trees And Men Grow Tall And True! Out In The Great Northwest. Where (the pamphlets made It clear) There Is Elbow Room For A Man To Be As Big And Important As He Feels It Is In Him To Be!”The Stamper clan is iconic in the area--tough, unforgiving, and on top. They’re in the midst of a fight with the other logging workers in town who, unlike the Stampers, belong to the union, and have gone on strike. Old wounds fester in that particular way they do in small towns.
Through the relationships-- between the loggers, between the clans, and amongst the Stamper family members--we begin to see what’s behind that beautiful and confounding blend of backward and shrewd that makes up these scrappy survivors.
The writing style is complex and artful. It made me think of this Herman Hesse quote:
“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?"
This is what Kesey does, flows the words like a river, in and out from present to past, pooling now and then so we can take a closer look, and at other times rushing so wildly that you lose your breath just reading. It can be hard to follow, but if you stay with it, go with the flow like floating down a river, you begin to make out what Kesey is doing, and it feels like a whole new way of seeing.
I was frustrated that the print copy I wanted wasn’t available, so I read the audio version on Hoopla. Even though audio is not my preferred mode of reading, I can’t praise the narrator of this version highly enough--Tom Stechschulte, an actor who sadly died last year. I see he has narrated quite a few titles available on Hoopla and I just bet they are all fantastic, because the performance he gave here in this long and complex novel was spellbinding.
A re-read in print is definitely in my future though, perhaps one of many before I can even begin to absorb this dazzling tour de force.
“Look... Reality is greater than the sum of its parts, also a damn sight holier. And the lives of such stuff as dreams are made of may be rounded with a sleep but they are not tied neatly with a red bow. Truth doesn’t run on time like a commuter train, though time may run on truth. And the Scenes Gone By and the Scenes to Come flow blending together in the sea-green deep while Now spreads in circles on the surface. So don’t sweat it. For focus simply move a few inches back or forward. And once more... look.”
Rating: really liked it
Most people only know of Ken Kesey, the novelist, because of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Some people know of him as the grand master of the Merry Pranksters in all their counter-cultural madness. "Either you're on the bus or you're off the bus."
Sometimes A Great Notion was his second novel. It is long, it is deep, it is a bit experimental, but it is also considered his masterpiece.
I spent four days reading the book's 628 pages. The last two days I read over 200 pages a day because once I got through the eye of the needle that was the beginning, I was exponentially more enraptured every day. If you like long novels, this is one well worth spending your time reading.
The novel concerns an Oregon logging clan, their struggles, their successes, their deep family problems. If at any moment it feels like the Stampers are going down, you don't find out until the very end if they will.
Such fully fleshed heroic characters, such desperate dysfunction, such glorious writing about the people, the location, the weather, the physical and emotional strife. Such eccentricity in the face of change, such sheer cussedness indeed!
John Steinbeck is probably the most famous writer of the American West. Another guy who became well known for one novel:
The Grapes of Wrath. Both went to Stanford University, both wrote about the plight of the common man. They were a generation apart. I would bet that Kesey read Steinbeck. My favorite Steinbeck novel is
East of Eden. I think
Sometimes a Great Notion was Kesey's
East of Eden.
Rating: really liked it
4.5 rounded up.
Whew! Finally got to the end of this 30 hour audiobook. I'd read this book many years ago, but a recent review by a GR friend (thanks, Robin!) reminded me of it, and I decided to revisit it to see how it landed now that I've lived so much more life. Kesey's other book (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) is one of my all time favorites, so I looked forward to re-experiencing this one.
It did not disappoint. On the surface it appears to be about small town loggers, union strikes, competing business interests, and the strife that comes when people land on opposite sides of an issue. But threaded throughout are complicated family dynamics, old and new grievances, the subtle and not-so-subtle whittling that happens as we rub up against each other, shaping our self-view and leaving scarred tracks in our beliefs and well-being.
It was man's world back then, and this book is testosterone rich, which might not suit everyone. It was also jarring to hear the N word used so casually as an expletive, which is pretty offensive and unexpected in today's world. I had to look past that, and forgive the author for it. This takes place in Oregon and it was fun to hear so many references to places I'm very familiar with. My paternal grandfather was a logger and lost his life in a logging accident. Hearing the descriptions of the work done brought to life the dangers of this occupation back in the day.
It was a bit difficult to follow who was speaking because different characters became the narrator without warning, perhaps made even more so because it was on audio. That said, narrator of the audiobook was very good and tried to change voices a bit to help distinguish the speaker.
Overall, a good listen and a fascinating and well-written story.
