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Title: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Author: Ken Kesey
Genre: Literary fiction
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: A con man tries to break the hold of a sadistic nurse over a mental institution.
Thoughts: Got really mixed feelings on this one.
It's a brilliant bit of writing. The narrator is himself mentally ill, so highly unreliable but also prone to flights of lyricism that would not work for a sane character. The battle of wits between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched is fascinating, incredibly psychologically insightful but still amusing. It's a short, fast paced little book that just sucks you along, leavening horror with humor to really immerse you in the world.
It's also very much a product of its time, which has some of its own problems. It's written from a fairly politically liberal perspective as a searing indictment of both the broken mental health system at the time and the soul-crushing conformity demanded by fifties and early sixties American culture. (More on this in a minute.)
What's really weird about the period, though, is that this liberal tone is utterly lacking in any of the sensitivity to minority or feminist rights that we would now expect to come with this kind of screed. It's racist. Deeply, uncomfortably racist. It's a little hard to tell how racist it's intended to be, what with the highly unreliable narrator and all. But the depiction of black characters is pretty awful. Even worse is his handling of women, especially in the climactic confrontation with Ratched. She's a terrible person, but the type of comeuppance she receives is so wildly inappropriate that it's really discomfiting.
I'm fairly sympathetic to most of Kesey's complaints about how the mentally ill were traeted at the time--from what I know, it was fairly terrible. I don't think we've solved all these issues today. However, I object to his implied thesis that mental illness is merely our label for people who don't fit into our society, and that the best thing would be to just leave the mentally ill alone to live as they please. I know too many people who have struggled with mental illness or who have had family members struggle to think so glib a solution is true. Perhaps society is overly strict with its definitions of "sane" behavior, but your right to swing your fist ends at my nose and some of the mentally ill are inherently incapable of understanding that boundary. Involuntary lobotomies as punishment is of course horrific; but I'm not sure the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill that left many of them on the streets is a particularly merciful solution.
Still, there is a certain amount of tolerance for ignorance you have to grant for a lot of things written in earlier times (as I hope our decendents will grant us). I think it is possible to find this a fascinating, well-done book without fully endorsing all of its ideas.
Author: Ken Kesey
Genre: Literary fiction
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: A con man tries to break the hold of a sadistic nurse over a mental institution.
Thoughts: Got really mixed feelings on this one.
It's a brilliant bit of writing. The narrator is himself mentally ill, so highly unreliable but also prone to flights of lyricism that would not work for a sane character. The battle of wits between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched is fascinating, incredibly psychologically insightful but still amusing. It's a short, fast paced little book that just sucks you along, leavening horror with humor to really immerse you in the world.
It's also very much a product of its time, which has some of its own problems. It's written from a fairly politically liberal perspective as a searing indictment of both the broken mental health system at the time and the soul-crushing conformity demanded by fifties and early sixties American culture. (More on this in a minute.)
What's really weird about the period, though, is that this liberal tone is utterly lacking in any of the sensitivity to minority or feminist rights that we would now expect to come with this kind of screed. It's racist. Deeply, uncomfortably racist. It's a little hard to tell how racist it's intended to be, what with the highly unreliable narrator and all. But the depiction of black characters is pretty awful. Even worse is his handling of women, especially in the climactic confrontation with Ratched. She's a terrible person, but the type of comeuppance she receives is so wildly inappropriate that it's really discomfiting.
I'm fairly sympathetic to most of Kesey's complaints about how the mentally ill were traeted at the time--from what I know, it was fairly terrible. I don't think we've solved all these issues today. However, I object to his implied thesis that mental illness is merely our label for people who don't fit into our society, and that the best thing would be to just leave the mentally ill alone to live as they please. I know too many people who have struggled with mental illness or who have had family members struggle to think so glib a solution is true. Perhaps society is overly strict with its definitions of "sane" behavior, but your right to swing your fist ends at my nose and some of the mentally ill are inherently incapable of understanding that boundary. Involuntary lobotomies as punishment is of course horrific; but I'm not sure the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill that left many of them on the streets is a particularly merciful solution.
Still, there is a certain amount of tolerance for ignorance you have to grant for a lot of things written in earlier times (as I hope our decendents will grant us). I think it is possible to find this a fascinating, well-done book without fully endorsing all of its ideas.
