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"What we are, we're going to wail with on this whole trip."

What Ken Kesey is is a prick, so let's not get any delusions about that.

But most great leaders are pricks, and the case Wolfe is making in this masterful biography is that Kesey, in his way, was a great leader. His early days on the Furthur bus, discovering LSD and inventing the psychedelic movement, come off like Stanley or Shackleton: explorers in new lands, leading a ragtag but brave band of adventurers into dangerous frontier territory. The middle part makes you feel like Kesey was really on the edge of something new - or at least that he really, really wanted to be - placing him among prophets remembered and failed.

The final part...well, you know how this arc goes. Hubris and overreaching. It's a standard rise and fall plot - if you've seen The Doors, you get the idea - but I've never seen it done better.

This book doesn't make me care much for Kesey. But I do have a new respect for Neal Cassady, now the muse of two counterculture movements in a row. I came out of On The Road feeling sorry for Cassady, who seemed like a mentally unstable person taken advantage of by Kerouac and his crew. But the fact that he managed to become a central, trusted, key figure once again, in this movement also...dude had to know what he was doing. I mean, other than killing himself.

I can't believe Gus Van Sant is sitting on the rights to this because he doesn't know how to film it. For Pete's sake, dude, just cast Robert Downey Jr and turn a camera on.

You may be reminded a few times that it is super boring to listen to someone describe their acid trip. You may disagree with the philosophy getting chased here. You may not like Ken Kesey at all. You may think the whole thing is mostly bullshit. But you will enjoy hearing Kesey wail with the whole trip.