My noble Chicago-based colleague Joe Lapsley is teaching The Republic of Rock in his course on the 1960s. He developed this “Acid Test Test” for his students after they read Chapter 1 of the book. To paraphrase Chief Merry Prankster Ken Kesey, Can you pass the Acid Test Test?
Joe Lapsley’s Acid Test Test
1. Ken Kesey was first given LSD by
A) Allen Ginsberg
B) an Indian Shaman
C) a CIA-funded program
2. Kramer likens an Acid Test to a
A) pirate ship
B) bonfire
C) volcano
3. Phil Lesh saw in the Acid Tests
A) egotistical evil
B) Cold War liberalism
C) spontaneous consensus
4. The Acid Tests sought to avoid
A) simplistic libertarianism
B) constraining communitarianism
C) both A and B
5. Kesey’s ideas about society were similar to Foucault’s
A) Pendulum
B) Panopticon
C) Pandemonium
the acid tests were kesey’s follow up literary work to his two novels.
“I saw that Cassady did everything a novel does, except he did it better ’cause he was livin’ it and not writin’ about it.” So “instead of publishing words,” Kesey determined to publish “a way of being in the world.”