It is made ascendent by the crude and colorful jibberings of Henry Stamper, the colloquia of the loggers, and the marked esteem with which Kesey writes about the Oregon landscape. Like Love and the Time of Cholera, Sometimes a Great Notion isn’t just buoyed by an imaginative array of compelling characters. Even besides the great conflagration of the Stamper’s, Sometimes a Great Notion is afire with humanity, Floyd Evenwrite, The DayGlo punks, Johnathan Draeger, Teddy the Barkeep, and even Molly the hound!Ĭharacters and language.

They radiate pathos, and project a profound respect for the people that they explore. Kesey wasn’t prolific, but he sure knocked it out of the park with the two novels of his that I’ve read. Maybe, just maybe it’s because it is the first book in over a year that has made me openly cry at the climactic tragedy of the story. Or maybe it’s because the town of Wakonda is painted with such a vivid nature-soaked imagery that I wanted to hide away in the Stamper’s barn and wait for that bobcat to show up looking for her kittens. Maybe I’m partial to it because it is the first book I’ve read that contains a character with my name in it (whose conniving machinations beat even mine!), but I don’t think that’s it. I’m honestly surprised that this book isn’t considered one of the Great American Novels. It is epic, gorgeously written, rendered in a piercingly iconoclastic tone, and wrestles with the big questions of life. To borrow the colorful diction of Henry Stamper, I have to say that Sometimes a Great Notion is a boogerin’ work of genius.

Sometimes a great notion book