Sometimes a Great Notion

Rating:
Summary: Quite average really.
Review: It seems to me that this novel evokes strong reactions - either you love it or hate it, there's no in-betweens. Until now! Sitting firmly on the fence, I thought that while this is not a great novel, neither is it a total dud.

Set in Oregon lumber country, "Sometimes a Great Notion" tells the story of Leland Stamper's quest for revenge. Set against a labour dispute, it's really a mixture of a Greek tragedy, a family feud and a person's struggle with his Oedipus complex. Kesey's writing style takes some getting used to - there are frequent switches between third and first person narratives: indeed between the first person narrators themselves, and it's not sectioned off as in say, Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying". The nearest analogy I could think of is a cinematic "split-screen" effect. No doubt this will not be to all readers' tastes, but I got used to it and felt it worked pretty well.

The strengths of the novel I thought were Kesey's depictions of the Stamper family members (in particular old Henry Stamper) - Kesey's dialogue felt authentic to me, although I only have intuition to fall back on here. Also, the descriptions of the realities of living in that part of Oregon were, for someone from an urban environment, very interesting - magnificent it must be, but Kesey does not spare the reader the harsh realities. This is no rural idyll.

The weaknesses I felt were due principally to the sheer length of the novel. It could have been edited down to a much more effective and punchy piece of work. Instead, it frequently meanders, the control over the plot is lost, and I was left with the feeling the Kesey too had become obsessed with style over substance.

Rating:
Summary: Difficult at first, but well worth the effort
Review: I have a daughter in college and to encourage her reading
habits we read a novel at the same time, switching off as
to who picks the book. I choose this one and she absolutely
hated it for the first 100 or so pages until she fell under
its trance, much like I did. To those of you who think that
Kesey was a one book wonder, please take the time to read
this book. You will not regret it.

Rating:
Summary: "any editor, please pick up the white courtesy phone..."
Review: Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion (Bantam Windstone, 1964)

I really, really wanted to like this book. An underread novel by an acknowledged American master of letters with a core of fans who consider it one of the best novels of the last century. What could be better? Well, to put it in as few words as possible, Kesey's writing style.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest works, and works so well, because it's tight. It's terse. It says what needs to be said. Kesey knows what he wants to say and says it. You get the idea. It's been compared to A Christmas Carol a number of times, and with very good reason. But if Cuckoo is Kesey's Christmas Carol, then Sometimes a Great Notion is Kesey's Bleak House. It's long-winded, rambling, incoherent, and could easily have lost three hundred pages from its final length without anyone noticing anything had gone; when your main character doesn't get to the place where all the action is happening until page 88, and still hasn't gotten his baggage from the bus terminal eight miles away fifty pages later, you know there's a whole lot of extraneous material therein. And while that makes sense within Kesey's chosen stylistic framework (the story is told by a
woman flipping through a photograph album), there's just too much of the rambling and not enough plot advancement. It's like being stuck in a whole novel of Melville's two-hundred-page cessation of action in Moby Dick. If you thought that was painfully unreadable, Sometimes a Great Notion may well send you into apoplectic fits.

Rating:
Summary: Undoubtably one of the best I've ever read
Review: Chills went up and down my spine when I saw this book on somebody's Listmania List. I've read this book at least three times in the past twenty years. This is Ken Kesey's masterpiece work about a stubborn Oregon logging family engaged in a struggle to fulfill a logging contract while living in the midst of angry strikers. How would you like to have a bunch of big guys with chainsaws angry at you? But seriously, this book isn't so much about physical violence as it is of the ugliness of human nature that can emerge under any given circumstances.
"Sometimes A Great Notion" also presents an interesting look at a dysfunctional, disturbed family, yet it is a family that engendered my empathy and in the end I was even awestruck by their resilience.
A movie was made based on "Sometimes A Great Notion" under the title "Never Give An Inch". I enjoy good books and good movies but I often feel that movies seldom measure up to the books they're based upon. Fortunately "Never Give An Inch" turned out to be a great movie. Paul Newman and Henry Fonda were among the starring cast. Unfortunately the movie never got the exposure it deserved because of a monetary dispute before being released.
Do yourself a favor. Read the book. Then see the movie. You won't be disappointed.
Addendum: The movie was released in VHS under the title "Sometimes A Great Notion".

Rating:
Summary: Gone But Never Forgotten
Review: Watching Ken Kesey's casket move down Willamette Street on the back of the resurrected "Further," I couldn't help but remember the first time I read this book. I couldn't put it down, and I found myself thinking about it when forced to break from reading. He does an amazing job drawing you into the characters, if you make the effort to really delve into this book (and it takes some effort). Ken Kesey loved Oregon, and he captured in words the beauty and ruggedness that is the Oregon coast. We here in my hometown were blessed to have him among us, though many of us often took the man for granted. This book is a classic and his best book, if not one of the best books ever written by a modern American author. Hopefully, his writing will never be taken for granted.

Rating:
Summary: riveting...from start to finish
Review: It has been 24 years since I read this book, and I still remember most of the characters' names, and could recite the plot and many of the individual scenes of the story verbatim. This novel has that kind of staying power. Cuckoo's Nest was good...but this is Kesey's masterpiece. This work of fiction feels more true and vivid than anything you are likely to experience in your actual life. I've read countless books...but few have stayed with me or remained etched upon my memory as did this one.

Rating:
Summary: Rewarding and Powerful
Review: Becuase the story emerges from confusion and pieces, becuase nature and man are intertwined, becuase the atmosphere is as strong as the story, this is an incredibly good book. I still think of it every time geese fly over.

Rating:
Summary: Wow. Words cannot explain...
Review: I just finished this book about fifteen minutes ago. I sat there for awhile first, just looking at the book...blown away. I don't want to forget a single line. I wish I could hang the pages up on my bedroom walls, so I could look at them longer. I have never read a book that amazing in my life. The writing is so perfect, so flawless...I imagine Kesey planning each sentence for weeks before he let it become a part of the book. The writing literally scared me. I'm sad to be finished with it.

It's definitely worth being a little confused in the beginning. I actually really liked the first 100 pages. The characters are real...they actually exist somewhere out there. I know it. Kesey has made me believe in them.

Read it!!

Rating:
Summary: One Man's Masterpiece
Review: After just learning that Ken Kesey has passed away, I began to think a little about the Stamper clan so eloquently described in this classic of American fiction. Whatever may be said about Kesey the man, this book can never be taken away from him. It is truly a masterpiece of literature, something so many authors strive for and so few accomplish. Whenever I see bickering amongst family members, friends, or politicians, I think of the Stamper clan and all of the complicated dynamics that go on in human relationships and interactions. If there is anything I learned from this book, it is that people are complicated and while it is always difficult to truly understand where someone else is coming from, the consequences of not doing so may be severe. Thank you Ken Kesey for this wonderful book that has challenged and provoked many readers throughout the last few decades. May you rest in peace.

Rating:
Summary: PERSEVERE BECAUSE YOU'RE READING THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN.
Review: i was 21 when i read this book, immediately after first reading One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest for the first time. For the first hundred or so pages I thought Keseys brain had been severely damaged by all them drugs but it soom became apparant that what I was reading here was an amazing book.Persevere with this book and you will be absolutely blown away. Ken Kesey died on the day I finished this book, may he RIP.