Shifting the action of the story to a completely different character as well as a different locality in just a short piece of dialogue. Kesey pulls out all the stops in this novel: This story of a fight between striking loggers and an independent family logging business takes on mythic dimensions. The story builds relentlessly from its initial image. Someone is going to lose an arm, or worse, but we keep reading, sometimes afraid of what is going to happen, but unable to stop. The sense of foreboding is set from the beginning and never lets up. Īnd from the very beginning of Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey’s second novel and eagerly-awaited follow-up to his acclaimed One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, we are hooked. Twisting and stopping and slowly untwisting in the gusting rain, eight or ten feet above the flood’s current, a human arm, tied at the wrist (just the arm look) disappearing downward at the frayed shoulder where an invisible dancer performs twisting pirouettes for an enthralled audience (just the arm, turning there, above the water)…”. Then, we notice that a human arm is dangling over the river:

Finally, in the foothills, through tamarack and sugar pine, shittim bark and silver spruce - and the green and blue mosaic of Douglas fir - the actual river falls 500 feet … and look: opens out upon the fields.” Then, through bearberry and salmonberry, blueberry and blackberry, the branches crashing into creek, into streams. The first little washes flashing like thick rushing winds through sheep sorrel and clover, ghost fern and nettle, sheering, cutting … forming branches. First, we are transported to the Oregon Coast:Īlong the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range … come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River …

Sometimes a great notion by ken kesey