One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Wow! What a great read. I saw the movie first, so it was a little tough trying to mentally block out the minor inaccuracies (McMurphy, for instance, has reddish hair while in the movie he has dark brown hair). Jack Nicholson definitely did this character justice, though. As with just about every book-to-movie tale, the book is much better. Such vivid imagery and thought tangents cannot be conveyed simply on the big screen. The story's told from the perspective of the Chief, a big slow moving patient at a mental hospital who's convinced everyone around him that he's deaf and dumb. The plot revolves around the revelry of the ward's newest patient Randle Patrick McMurphy, a fast-talking gambler with an eye for anarchy. Such a fantastic read, I highly recommend this book. Ken Kesey was a doing a shitload of psychedelics at the time of writing the book, too (legally, as part of a series of scientific studies), and garnered much inspiration for the novel from visiting a real mental ward and interacting with the patients. Ah, such a good book, it makes me giddy just thinking about it. I'd have more to say if I had written this review just after finishing the book a few weeks ago. Very depressing, but that's something I love in a book! Read it!

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