"Powerful, poetic realism...makes the tired old subject of life in a mental hospital into an absorbing Orwellian microcosm of all humanity."—Life.An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. This Viking Critical Library edition is accompanied by essays, discussion topics, a chronology, and a bibliography. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results. With One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey created a work without precedent in American literature, a novel at once comic and tragic that probes the nature of madness and sanity, authority and vitality. Greeted by unanimous acclaim when it was first published, the book has become and enduring favorite of readers.

Table of Contents:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NestIntroduction Chronology I. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: The Text II. The Author and His Work TOM WOLFE, What Do You Think of My Buddha? KEN KESEY, An Early Draft of the Opening Scene of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest KEN KESEY, Letter to Ken Babbs: ["Peyote and Point of View"] KEN KESEY, Letter to Ken Babbs: ["People on the Ward"] KEN KESEY, Characters on the Ward KEN KESEY, Draft Page with Holograph Revisions KEN KESEY, from An Impolite Interview with Ken Kesey KEN KESEY, from Ken Kesey Was a Successful Dope Fiend KEN KESEY, Who Flew Over What? III. Literary Criticism JACK F. MCCOMB, The RPM LESLIE A. FIEDLER, The Higher Sentimentality TERRY G. SHERWOOD, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the Comic Strip JAMES E. MILLER, JR., The Humor in the Horror JOSEPH J. WALDMEIR, Two Novelists of the Absurd: Heller and Kesey JOHN A. BARSNESS, Ken Kesey: The Hero in Modern Dress IRVING MALIN, Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ROBERT BOYERS, Porno-Politics HAROLD CLURMAN, Review of the Play WALTER KERR, ...And the Young Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest MARCIA L. FALK, Letter to the Editor of The New York Times LESLIE HORST, Bitches, Twitches, and Eunuchs: Sex-Role Failure and Caricature ANNETTE BENERT, The Voices of Fear: Kesey's Anatomy of Insanity BENJAMIN GOLUBOFF, The Carnival Artist in the Cuckoo's Nest MARSHA MCCREADIE, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Some Reasons for One Happy Adaptation CAROL PEARSON, The Cowboy Saint and the Indian Poet: The Comic Hero in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest IV. Analogies and Perspectives DALE WASSERMAN, from his play One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest MARY FRANCES ROBINSON, Ph.D., and WALTER FREEMAN, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.P., Glimpses of Postlobotomy Personalities ARTHUR P. NOYES, M.D., and LAWRENCE C. KOLB, M.D., Shock and Other Physical Therapies RALPH ELLISON, from Invisible Man ROBERT PENN WARREN, from All the King's Men KEN KESEY, Neal Cassady JACK KEROUAC, from On the Road Topics for Discussion and Papers Selected Bibliography prepared by Joseph Weixlmann and M. Gilbert Porter