A classic published in 1964 and takes place in the 60's in fictitious logging town of Wakonda, Oregon. I did not like reading this book at all. There were too many first persons telling the story. I was constantly lost in who was actually talking. On top of this, the author, would throw in other people's thoughts in parenthesis while another character was talking in first person. So, I was seriously like...Who the hell is thinking now?

The basis of the story: Jonas Stamper, the pioneer who brought his family there to homestead on the Wakonda Bay, Oregon, the sin of always looking for greener pastures, moved slowly over time from the east coast to the end of the line, the Pacific Coast. He built a house on the banks of the Wakonda Auga. But, Jonas couldn't handle the continuous fog, the wet and enclosed feeling of the woods all around, so he just up and left the family, a wife and three boys, for the local towns people to take care of. Henry, the oldest son swore he would stay and show the people they weren't quitters.

When the other local logging companies became unionized, the Stampers did not. They worked strictly with family members and when the loggers went on strike, the Stampers stepped up their game and contracted with the companies for their logs, which was highly disruptive to the union organization and the towns people who were now out of jobs.

Being a man short, they needed Leland, the youngest brother...a mother's boy who went away to college, to return home and help the family prove they were capable and worthy and help the family business. But, Leland had a bone to pick with his oldest 1/2 brother, Hank, and struggled with honoring the family name or betraying Hank, who he found out had a love affair with his mother. ( )

I could not understand why most of the characters acted the way they did. One thing just happened after another. Not a pleasant novel. ( )

I bought this book nearly 30 years ago when I first moved to Oregon the late summer of 1992. I read the first part and put it down thinking I would get back to finishing it. Funny thing how a book can sit on shelf for three decades. I picked it back up after retiring from the military. It was hard a first to get into this book with the way Kesey wrote it, switching characters paragraph my paragraph without attribution. I was only reading about 30 pages or so a day until I read the last 150 in day because it finishes in such a flurry. I remember bits and pieces of the film and the All-star cast that was done in 1970-71, but the book is so much more nuanced with background and character developed. There are seminaries I found in this novel and John Steinbeck's "East of Eden," with the struggle between two bothers, the western independent spirit of working on the land, and the plot lines that lead to tragic ending for key characters. It's one of those books that I am glad I 'pushed through' to finally read in completion, even though it took picking up more than a couple of times. The characters are so well defined as most of this comes from their interactions with each other and by their own voice that Kesey weaves into the narrative. I understand why this has been reviewed as a "Classic" on many levels. Clearly a reflection of the 1960s creative stream of conscience narrative writing style that Jack Kerouac used in "On The Road." ( )

To know a thing you have to trust what you know, and all that you know, and as far as you know in whatever direction your knowing drags you.

One of the things I know is that Ken Kesey was a one of a kind writer, who knew his craft and invented his own style. Beginning this book can be off-putting, because there isn’t a narrator for the story--Kesey bounces around inside the heads of a dozen characters, switching without warning from one to the other, and making you dizzy with trying to sort out whose thoughts you are following. He also does nothing as mundane as telling a story in a linear fashion, oh no, he bounces time frames almost as much as he does characters in the beginning. But read on! When you have settled into the rhythm of what he is doing, he begins to tell a more linear tale and it becomes obvious to you who is speaking and why it is important not to follow this story through the eyes of only one character or even an omniscient being.

I found his descriptions and language beautiful. It was as close to being on an Oregon river in the winter as I would ever want to come; it was closer than I would ever want to get to a logging operation. The prose is beautiful, but there is also a touch of the poetic in his writing, as I think is demonstrated in this passage:

But the breath of memory still plucks such instances, setting the whole web shaking. People fade up the stairs, but to dream of each other’s dreams; of days coming gone and nights past coming; of hard sun-rods crisscrossing back and forward across outspreading circles of water, meaningless-seeming…

The Stamper family are loggers and rugged individualists. They don’t ask for anything and they give little thought to anyone outside their family circle. Henry Stamper is the patriarch of the clan and son, Hank is the heart and the driving force. When all the logging operations unionize and go out on strike, the Stamper’s non-union business takes up the major contract in the area, defying the strikers. Everyone is against them; the town is against them. Youngest son, Leland, is a college kid, raised in the city, away from this world, since the age of twelve. He has a decided problem with his older brother, and much of the angst and tension is heightened by the silent duel Lee is constantly fighting in his mind. He has come home, ostensibly to help with fulfilling the contract, but mostly for the personal satisfaction of proving he is able to dethrone his older brother. As if it were needed to add to the edginess, there is a woman involved.

This is a very long book and not a wasted page in it, with themes that are as large as the outdoorsmen who inhabit it. Sibling rivalry, individuals vs. organizations, brotherhood and the love between men who share daily dangers, how the needs of a woman differ from those of a man, and what love really is anyway, play out in the unwinding of the novel.

For there is always a sanctuary more, a door that can never be forced, a last inviolable stronghold that can never be taken, whatever the attack; your vote can be taken, you name, you innards, or even your life, but that last stonghold can only be surrendered. And to surrender it for any reason other than love is to surrender love.

If you like books that literally transport you to another world and hold you there, this book is for you. I thought about it after I turned the lights out at night. It haunted my sleep and distracted me from my duties. It consumed me. And, it made me twitch with the restlessness of these men and shake and worry for their safety from the environment, from the people around them, and from one another. This is a masterpiece.
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Una triunfal visión de la vida norteamericana de mediados del siglo que significará sin duda, un fragmento importante del testamento de su generación.