Further (ePub)

Further: Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters Ride Again!

In the mid-60's, when the term 'hippie' was just being borne, Ken Kesey knew that things were going amiss. "We're not being creative man," Kesey famously said while on the run near San Francisco. "We need to move onto The Next Big Thing. We can do it without the drugs." Well, what if Kesey had moved onto The Next Big Thing; and in a completely refurbished Furthur II -- now dried out from being terribly water logged in Eugene, Oregon -- he and his Merry Pranksters began Time Traveling? In Further, Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters remain true to themselves as a small tribe traveling across America, and in their latest incarnation, they are on a mission to save humanity from itself in the 21st century. In the 1960's, as before, things are still wild and crazy, Peace and Love are in the air, and we see Ken and The Merry Pranksters breaking from the herd that is humanity. They do various drugs and trip like the seekers that they are -- and try to be in The Now, and attempt to overcome the neurological lag that they had always talked about. They religiously film their exploits. They meet many Americans as they travel across the highways and biways of life. And Tom Wolfe is still with them chronicling their psychedelic journey before they travel some more ... into the so-called past and then the future that's remarkably all happening at once! Later on, The Merry Pranksters have significantly changed in their outlook. They have matured and they begin doing their famous pranks in a non-violent manner attempting to give people a glimpse of satori (or enlightenment). Then as Further unfolds, we see Ken and the Pranksters dumping Sodium Pentathol into the many reservoirs in the United States so that people when they wake up, brush their teeth and drink this new pristine water they begin to speak the Truth again. The book essentially catalogues their unique journey much like Slaughterhouse Five as they move back and forth through time: the 1960's, the mid-21st century, WWII, and many other scenes trying to collectively expand human consciousness before our self-created world crises doom us.