One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Indeed it is a classic. Considering my field of passion, I'm ashamed I have not read it. Furthermore, there's a movie as well - which I have not seen. So, it was my plan to finish the read this summer and rent the movie through Netflix. (It's always better to read first, watch later!)

This book is full of erudite gems. I must sincerely thank my (high school) senior AP English teacher for training my mind to catch the quips of literary geniuses like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ralph Ellison. Mr. McClellan, I'm grateful for everything I learned in your class!

Now then, onto Ken Kesey. The metaphors just jump off the page and into the reader's lap! The language is rugged and chaotic, designed to reflect the babbling nature of patients on a psychiatric ward. Nonetheless, their words make sense. As a student of Psychology, I should question - is this a comment on the negated lunacy of the patients, or the skill of the author?

I could go on and on, but here's a snippet.

"While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh across the water - laughing at the girl, the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service-station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy."