Tom Wolfe, the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Fiber-based gelatin silver print, 21.8 x 28.8 cm on 22.9 x 33 cm paper (8.6 x 11.8 in. on 9 x 13 in. paper); hardcover volume in a slipcase, letterpress-printed text, two different paper stocks, and tip-ins, 24 x 34 cm (9.4 x 13.4 in.), 356 pages. In 1964, famed writer Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters set off across America on a “Transcontinental Bus Tour,” headed for the New York World’s Fair. Kesey’s journey, in the company of his Merry Pranksters, lies at the heart of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, an as-if-first-hand account of the group’s antics and ethos by Tom Wolfe, wunderkind of the New Journalism movement. This Art Edition presents Wolfe’s era-defining text in letterpress, along with facsimile reproductions of his manuscript pages, ephemera of the period, and photographs of the acid scene by Lawrence Schiller and Ted Streshinsky. The accompanying print, Me and My Shadow, by Lawrence Schiller, was photographed at the Hollywood Acid Test on February 25, 1966. As the first photojournalist to capture the acid scene from the inside, Schiller began with a single contact in Berkeley, California, and built a large network of young, receptive subjects who allowed him to document their experiences with LSD starting in late 1965. At first, he was a fly on the wall as groups of friends tripped in the privacy of their homes. By early 1966 he had met the Merry Pranksters and was invited to the Acid Test in Hollywood. During the Test, Kool-Aid laced with a heavy dose of LSD was served up from an industrial-sized pot. Participants turned on the Grateful Dead’s music and tuned in to the burgeoning psychedelic scene. Schiller’s image of a tripster “freaking freely” with his own shadow—long believed to be Neal Cassady—appeared in Life magazine in March 1966 in a photo essay which served to introduce the nation to the sweeping new LSD epidemic. For Flaming Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne...

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