CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

THE ELECTRIC BUTTERMILK ACID TEST

DEMON BOX by Ken Kesey (Viking)

by Richard C. Walls

Ken Kesey's last novel, Sometimes A Great Notion, came Out over 22 years ago. Previously, he had written that classic of the individual at war with a spirit-crushing establishment, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (a great book to read in school when you've still got enough spirit to respond). Since Notion, Kesey's main claim to our attention has been as a character in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. This chronicle of the Merry Pranksters followed Kesey and his pals and their DayGlo bus on their crosscountry search for the eternal now. Not that they found it, or anything else, but with Kesey it's the quest that counts,

It's these periodic quests, in fact, which keep Demon Box from being a collection of well-written farm memories. Though Kesey is now ensconced on his spread in Oregon, escaping drugbust related hassles and that dirty city life, every now and then that old urge to seek over comes him. And though little comes from these wild truth chases that you could call Actual Wisdom, Kesey usually manages to squeeze an entertaining magazine article out of the experience. Box is a collection of these articles from the past 20 years, plus some pieces about the farm, all bound by the unifying presence of Kesey's alterego, Devlin Deboree, which makes this a novel, kind of.

The farm stuff is surprisingly good. Really, if you're looking for a gripping story about the time the bull got through the fence, then this is the book for you. Kesey seems to have found a big chunk of that meaning, higher or otherwise, that he feels compelled to pursue, in the surety of the country seasons, in the life-and-death cycles and elaborate courtship rituals of his livestock, in the simple satisfactions of supplyIng some staples for yourself in a direct manner. Sure, it's a corny life, but Kesey's always been a corny guy-a jock, a macho clown, a farm boy. Which may make him seem an unlikely can didate for countercultural hero, but only to those unaware of how a revolt against modern society often makes for an intensification of traditional values, particularly when it comes to gender roles. Be it beat, hippie, or new left, a lot of the people weren't looking for anarchy, but rather a strong re-affirmation of old ideals not lived up to; and so, the men took care of biz while the womenfolk strung the beads, ran the mimeograph machines and, on Kesey's rancho paradiso, they hover in the background making potato salad (which is why so many old rads, Political and cultural, end up as reactionaries or born-again or both-it's not that big a change). We know that Kesey's got a wife because every hundred pages or so she comes on stage and says something wife-like. Apart from that, the book has two bona fide Crazy Ladies (you know how colorful women be when their delicate chemicals get unbalanced) and granny, old as time and twice as cute (blech). Ab, but it's a man's life up on the ol' farm, fixing that dang fence almost ever day. restoring the garden where those dad-gum city visitors trampled.. .chaslng after your favorite Big-Mac-tobe.. getting stoned outta your skull.. taking off for Egypt.

Which brings us to Topic B of Demon Box. Kesoy/ Deboree's repeated quest for some Big Truths are, like the country sketches, admirably written, almost always interesting, but..they don't really go anywhere. In Egypt, seeking the secret of the pyramids, Kesey instead Just falls prey to some standard tourist hustles. In China, after the relentless tracking down of the indescribably wise Dr. Fang, Kesey confronts the great teacher and,. can't think of anything to ask him. During a trip to Disney World (!), in search of the outrageously illuminated Dr. Woofnor, Kesey drinks himself into such a stupor that he's ashamed to look the doc in the eye.. .the next day he suffers a mysterious soulwrenching remorse (us less questing types refer to this as a "hangover"). And so it goes. What saves these shaggy dog tales from being pathetic is Kesey's willingness to allow himself to be the butt of his own sense of humor-he knows he's a bit of a fool, and this makes him more likeable than not, at least for most of the duration of Demon Box. This and the odd acid-eyed passage of alive and tingling prose! poetry is what makes this box worth dipping into (Sorry gang, I was hoping for another Cuckoo's Nest, too).

EVER SEE A DUCK MAKE SOAP?

SWEETIE BABY COOKIE HONEY by Freddie Gershon (Arbor House)

by Toby Goldstein

If passion, love, anger, hatred and the burning fires of creative genius wore only measurable in dollars, then Swootie Baby Cookie Honey, this year's big-budgeted attempt to produce the ultimate music business novel, would be a masterpiece. Its most animated moments concern the doing of deals, not the writing or playing of rock 'n' roil. What this book is, con* sequently, is the artificial byproduct of a lawyer's attempt to make his years of number crunching an acceptable substitute for any understanding of real relationships.

Author Freddie Gershon won his legal laurels as counsel to 1970s music impresario Robert Stigwood, an organization and a time that were, in their reliance on the most derivative type of disco, perhaps the nadir of pop music since the beginnings of rock 'n' roll. Maybe all the formula artists Gershon represented account for his inability to write personalities that are more than cardboard stereotypes. He gives us four; sensitive songwriter Rick Firestone, who’s somewhere in between Neil Sedaka and Barry Manilow; self-destructive Hedy Harlowe, kinda like a Janis Joplin/Bette Midler blend; resilient Joyce Heller, successful in business but unlucky in love (Gershon’s obviously studied from the dudith Krantz stylebook); and, oh yes, the gracefully maturing, generally upstanding lawyer, David Barry, who everyone else turns to when their problems become Just Too Much. C'mon Freddie baby, did you really expect us to not see through such a transparent act of self-promotion?

The novel's plot is equally thin, attempting tp span over three decades of rock ’n' roll as its protagonists travel from humble Brooklyn beginnings to international renown. Unfortunately, even the convention of dividing his chapters into years doesn’t keep Gershon away from anachronisms. For instance, he places the blowsy chanteuse Hedy Into the gay bath scene (the one that launched Bette Midler around 1971) in 1958 -over a decade before such establishments would have dared risk public~bse...ation. A name dropper, he whisks his characters through early 1 960s swinging London and mid-i 960s San Francisco without providing believable understanding of those ex traordl nary environments. In fact, the only. era with which Gershon seems at all comfor table is the 1950s Brill Building songwriter factory in New York.

The tag on which the "plot" of this lead balloon hangs is Gershon's recount ing of the theory that several notorious and dead rock stars did not pass~ away ac cidentally. His record com pany executives (except of course for his legal alter-ego) are invariably mob-related or so Nazi-like that murder is merely an extreti.e variation on their stock in trade. Given the still unresolved deaths of Brian Jones and Jim. Mor rison, it's. a tempting hypo thesis. But if the big wheels were really so indiscreet, surely one of the govern ment's many rock `n' roll pogroms would have uncov eréd one neer-do-weil.

Sweetie Baby Cookie Honey is a novel written towards one purpose: with stock footage. characters, good-evil situations, and a few dollops of (clumsily writ.ten) sex, it's a setup for TV serialization. Rumor has it that such an aberration is already in the works,. but fair warning-you. won't find en joyable villains like Alexis Colby and JR. Ewing, or heroes like Blake Carrington and Mack McKenzie here. This.. is a tale told by an author with the soul o f an ac countant. In the real world, record labels learned the hard way that hiring dollars and cents graduates to Scout talent led straight to disaster. Here's hoping that publishers searching for a novel that packs the punch of a firstclass rock tune will start con sidering the source before they sign the contract.