KESEY'S GARAGE SALE

Garage with a b — for this is really a collection of fourth-class Kesey memorabilia mainly from the Whole Earth Catalogue era — reprints of articles, interviews, letters to and from other '60's divinities like Neal Cassady, Paul Krassner, and Allen Ginsberg, plus endless "acidophilic artisticizing" (cartoons that, unfortunately, live up to their name) in and around self-righteous little sermons, anti-abortion and pro-Beatles, plus an intermittent running commentary by the compiler, one most unlikable Arthur Miller, whose chief task (other than guardian of the Flame) seems to be to remind us how clever and chic this rip-off really is: "Inspired Genius struck! The idea of a Garage Sale, a familiar maneuver that puts stale outmoded stored members of your ordinary household back into the economic flow. . . ." The longest section is a densely garbled sometimes humorous screenplay about the adventures of a number of Merry Prankster-type freaks in and around Mexico, forever getting in and out of broken down cars and buses, eluding cops, smoking dope — sad reminders of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Kit days. One wonders if the drug trip could have been all that mindlessly fatuous. Nothing ages like yesterday's doppelganger. What this book is really about is keeping the master's name around and maybe raking in a little to tide him over until the halcyon days of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or even Sometimes a Great Notion return in all their remembered glory, maybe.