Ed McClanahan Papers, 1970-2005

Ed McClanahan was born in Brooksville, Kentucky in 1932. He received a bachelor’s degree from Miami (Ohio) University in 1955 and a master’s at the University of Kentucky in 1958. McClanahan was a professor of English and creative writing at Oregon State University, Stanford University, the University of Montana, the University of Kentucky, and Northern Kentucky University. Some of McClanahan’s novels include The Natural Man, Famous People I have Known, and A Congress of Wonders. McClanahan’s writing has been published in magazines such as Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Playboy, and he is a two time winner of Playboy’s Best Non-Fiction Award as well as a recipient of the Wallace Stegner Fellowship.

While McClanahan was at Stanford he became a close friend of Ken Kesey, the founder of the Merry Pranksters. After Kesey’s death, as a tribute to him, McClanahan edited a final issue of Kesey’s magazine Spit in the Ocean. He titled it Spit in the Ocean # 7: All About Kesey, and it was published in 2003. McClanahan currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky with his wife Hilda. There he continues his work as a writer .

Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado in 1935. At age eleven, his family moved to Springfield, Oregon. Kesey received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon before studying creative writing at Stanford University in the 1950s under Wallace Stegner. While at Stanford he participated in U.S. Army experiments with the drug LSD. He drew upon this experience to publish his most successful book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1962. In 1964 he published another successful novel entitled Sometimes a Great Notion.

Kesey was well known for his non-conformist and activist views. He bridged the gap between the countercultural beat generation of the 1950s, and the hippies of the 1960s. Kesey and his band of friends called themselves the Merry Pranksters and are best known for their 1964 cross-country journey on a multi-colored bus in 1964. The Pranksters saw psychoactive drug use as a break from conformity and a path to individual liberation. The Merry Pranksters included Kesey, his close friend Ken Babbs, Kentucky writer Ed McClanahan, Neal Cassady, Carolyn Adams, and others. After serving a short term in jail for drug use in 1965, Kesey moved to farm near Pleasant Hill, Oregon. There he continued to publish his writings. He wrote several articles for Rolling Stone, and with his associates published the magazine, Spit in the Ocean. In 1992, Kesey published a third novel, Sailor Song. He died on November 10, 2001.