“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1962) by Ken Kesey (post 1): Why, in two interviews, does author blatantly contradict himself on origin of his narrator?

In a literature professor’s Introduction to this edition of the novel, the author’s contradictory explanations for how his narrator came to be a Native American are noted and discussed for three pages, but it is not explained: “The legend that Chief Bromden had sprung full blown from Kesey’s brain on peyote had been fueled by Kesey himself. Later, Kesey modified his account…the images came from reading in eastern mysticism, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and Melville…Kesey’s experience with Indians began much earlier…” (1, pp. xx-xxi).

1989 Interview

“…those first few pages of Cuckoo’s Nest were written on peyote. And I don’t know any Indians. I don’t know where the Indian came from. I’ve always been humbled by that character. Without the character of that Indian, the book is a melodrama. You know, it’s a straight battle between McMurphy and Big Nurse. With that Indian’s consciousness to filter that through, that makes it exceptional” (2, p. 114).

1993 Interview

INTERVIEWER: To go back to Cuckoo’s Nest, it seems that Chief Bromden’s perspective is crucial. What was the origin of his character?

KESEY: Some have described Bromden as schizophrenic. But his is a philosophical craziness, not a clinical illness…When I first came to Oregon, I’d see Indians out on the scaffolds with long tridents stabbing salmon trying to get up the falls. The government had bought out their village, moved them across the road where they built new shacks for them…One of them crazy drunk Indians took a knife between his teeth and ran out into the highway and into the grill of an oncoming diesel truck, which was bringing conduit and piping to the dam project. I thought, Boy, that’s far out. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He just had to grab his knife, go out on the freeway, and run into a truck. It was really the beginning of Cuckoo’s Nest—the notion of what you have to pay for a lifestyle. It started an appreciation in me for the Indian sense of justice and drama. I mean, it’s dumb and nasty, but that’s class, and the fact that he had the knife between his teeth, that’s style. So this Indian consciousness has been very important in all the stuff that I write” (2, pp. 154-155).

Comment

As discussed previously in connection to William Faulkner, some fiction writers don’t like to give interviews, because they have given contradictory answers to the same question, which was embarrassing.

The reason is that some fiction writers can’t be sure which of their personalities will come out during an interview, and different personalities may have different memories and interests.

1. Ken Kesey. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest [1962]. Text Introduction by Robert Faggen. New York, Penguin Books, 2007.

2. Scott F. Parker (Editor). Conversations with Ken Kesey. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2014.