05/01/2022
The Merry Pranksters are a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon. The group promoted the use of psychedelic drugs. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus enigmatically and variably labeled "Further" or "Furthur". Their early escapades were chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Wolfe also documents a notorious 1966 trip on Further from Mexico thru Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend novelist Larry McMurtry. Kesey was on the lam from a drug charge at the time.
Notable members of the group include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs and Neal Cassady, Carolyn Garcia (also known as Mountain Girl), Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, Stewart Brand, Del Close, Paul Foster, Kentucky Fab Five author Ed McClanahan (also known as "Captain Kentucky"), Gurney Norman, George Walker, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, Anonymous (Linda Breen) and John Page Browning (also known as "Rampage" or the "Cadaverous Cowboy").
