Review: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Originally published in 1968 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' by Tom Wolfe is both a remarkable work of journalism and a historical-literary classic. It follows the exploits of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they trip their way round the US in the 1960s, turning on the masses and experimenting in group consciousness; all under the influence of LSD and a multimedia of sensual bombardment.

As a work of psychedelic literature it is a brilliant exploration into the social effects of LSD, at a time when the psy-movement itself was producing very little in the way of literature. As Wolfe notes in his introduction to the New Journalism anthology: "I wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and then waited for the novels that I was sure would come pouring out of the psychedelic experience… but they never came forth… I learned later that publishers had been waiting too."

Unlike Hunter S. Thompson, who posited himself as the framework for his texts, Tom Wolfe, although present in places, tends less toward his own psychology and more to the mise-en-scene of events and to the minds of those people with whom he travels and interviews. The upshot of this is a very literary undertaking that focuses a lot on atmosphere and feeling; rather than only objective fact recording...