2016 Reading: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

#36 A book about a road trip

I actually finished this book before Christmas but I was busy with the holiday stuffy-stuff that I didn't get the chance to write about it.

This book, while a little difficult to get through because of the way it was written, was actually a very good read. Once you get passed the language, then it just becomes this whirlwind story that you can hardly believe actually happened. I was happy to see some people's names that I recognized and it made me want to go back in time so that I could meet them all at once in their prime. Especially Allen Ginsburg.

This quote stuck out:

Sometime after that I was up in Haight-Ashbury with some kid, not a Prankster, a kid 

from another communal group, and the kid was trying to open an old secrétaire, the 

kind that opens out into a desktop you can write on, and he pinches his finger in a 

hinge. Only instead of saying Aw shit or whatever, the whole thing becomes a parable 

of life, and he says: 

"That's typical. You see that? Even the poor cat who designed this thing was 

playing the game they wanted him to play. You see how this thing is designed, to open 

out? It's always out, into, it's got to be out, into your life, the old bullshit thrust—you 

know?—they don't even think about it—you know?—this is just the way they design 

things and you're here and they're there and they're going to keep coming at you. You 

see that kitchen table?" There is an old enamel-top kitchen table you can see through a 

doorway in there. "Now that's actually better design, it actually is, than all this ornate 

shit, I mean, I truly dig that kitchen table, because the whole thing is right there—you 

know?—it's there to receive, that's what it's all about, it's passive, I mean what the hell 

is a table anyway? Freud said a table is a symbol of a woman, with her shanks open, 

balling it, in dreams—you know?—and what is this a symbol of?" He points to the 

secrétaire. "It's a symbol of fuck-you, Fuck you, right?" And so on, until I want to put 

my hand on his shoulder and say why don't you just kick it in the kneecaps and let it 

go at that. (pg 12)

I don't think I have ever been that mad at a piece of furniture.

Well now I have to go download me some Grateful Dead and paint myself in Day-Glo...