The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was the defining work of the young author Tom Wolfe. Using the intense genre of hysterical realism, he tells the epic story of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, as they rocket across the country in a dayglow 1939 International Harvester school bus, rapping away on the best soundsystem anywhere, and filming everything they could.

Tom Wolfe's influences

Tom Wolfe?s life greatly influenced this book, despite the fact that he only witnessed a very small portion of it himself. He was not a hippie by any stretch, nor did he even do drugs very often, but he was intrigued enough by the legendary bus trip, that he traveled halfway across the country to witness The Merry Pranksters in action. He interviewed numerous people in order to get all of the facts right. This helped to really give a good representation of what the trip must have been like to those who were there. The author?s unique interpretation of their adventures obviously came from his everyday life, but one might wonder from where. It could not have come from rampant drug use, as most characters? interpretations might have, for he did not take drugs on a regular basis. Despite this, he seems to write as manically as someone who would have been ?on the bus.? This points to the possibility that he may have gotten his inspiration for parts of the story directly from letters or first hand experience of Pranksters. This would greatly explain how portions of the story are written in a first person manner or in screen written style.

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