environment and all the recreational opportunities, to this day it's still a really outdoor city place as you can see just from the river and the trails around here. >> welcome to eugene, oregon, on booktv. in cooperation with our comcast cable partners, over the next 90 minutes we'll travel the city to talk with writers about eugene and the surrounding areas. and we'll also hear from local authors whose books help tell the story of our nation. first, we hear about counterculture. >> we're here at the university of oregon campus. we're in the knight library in special collections and university archives and at the moment we're in the ken keezy classroom. he was an oregonian, he lived in springfield, oregon, and attended the university of

oregon. he wrote two of the great american novels, one flew over the cuckoo's nest and sometimes a great notion. his papers are here at the university of oregon because he wanted his collection to be here. he felt that -- he was an oregonian, he had so many experiences here in oregon, and he felt it was the right thing for the collection to be here in his alma mater. today i wrought out a number of different examples of manuscripts that are included in the collection x that includes things like correspondence, his artwork. he was not just a writer, but also an artist. so we have examples of his artwork we have literary manuscripts in the collection, we have a diary that he kept when he was at the university which is a fabulous resource about what his experience was like when he was a student here

at the university. talk about his relationships with other people in his life. just very exciting collection of primary sources that can help this color burn more about ken kesey. ken kesey had an outgoing personality, and that's reflected in the student yearbook. he was very involved in a lot of different student activities. this is the organic in 1955, and

he was a performer. one thing he did was he was a ventriloquist and here's an example of him with his dummy doing a performance figures also involved in other student activities. he was a contributor to the oregon daily emerald, they student newspaper, and he participated in a number of different student groups as well. he was a member of the data theta pi fraternity, and here he was a member of the student organization, the druids. must have been a student club of some sort, and here he is at that time. and this is from the 1966 orgena. when he was a student he was always writing in some form or another. when he was an undergraduate he kept this a journal, and here it

says kk. and it's very extensive and detailed, and so this is really a great primary source for anybody doing research about his experiences when he was a student at the university. you know, talks about sports events, talks about his relationship with fay. he met her when you are both in junior high and were married under at the university of oregon. let's see, it was 1956 when they got married. after he graduated from the university of oregon in 1959, ken kesey went down to the bay area to study creative writing with wallace stegner, and later malcolm crowley at stanford

university in the creative writing program there. when he was there he wrote extensively with, to his friend, came babs. as assembly of of the letter we have in the collection. this was in early one from august, some of 1959. and somebody who was an undergraduate at the university of oregon came to our repository in 1998 to read all the letters and then he did annotations about each of these letters. so not only does the scholar have access to the original letter, but they had these annotations and abstracts of the letters that tell the researcher detail about likely that people are in the letter that he is talking about. and so this is just a fabulous resource for researchers

gathering information from the letters. gathered throughout all the letters are details about what he's doing, things that are happening personally to him. they adopted a daughter. they had a baby. he talks about faith work in the library at stanford university. just all different kinds of personal information is presented in these letters. this is a letter that he wrote to ken in the sum of 59 and had his dog sign the letter -- the summer of 59. this is the original manuscript for one flew over the cuckoos nest. this copy begins with page two. we never received page one, so this is the oldest, or the earliest manuscript from one flew over the cuckoos nest. you can see editorial marks and

changes to the manuscript. ken himself, as i mentioned, was a graphic artist, too. i'm not sure if graphic arts would be the right term, but he knew how to draw and he drew these characters that are in one flew over the cuckoos nest. this is the main character, one of the main characters, randall mcmurphy. i believe this is the psychiatrist and these are some other characters in the story. after the book was published, a psychiatrist named lewis bartlett read the book, a descent ken a fan letter. and there ensued correspondence between the two of them about mental institutions, psychiatry, and those kinds of details. and in this letter is the first

letter that the psychiatrist sent, and he is basically saying, you know, i found your book so well-written, i really enjoyed reading it. and then ken writes back, and in his letter he mentions that he really wanted to know how to patients experienced electroshock therapy. because he wanted to get his representation of it right in the book. and so he's telling dr. bartlett that he had a friend rig up electroshock therapy treatment for himself and that he actually experienced it and he concluded yes, it was terrifying, yes, it was horrible, so he's able to portray that well in his book. and dr. bartlett writes back horrified that he actually had done that. and he says if i understood yor letter quickly from a friend in

electronics rig and electroshock therapy ndu a treatment? jesus h christ, if that so you could have done a more terrifying thing. he gives me the horrors to think about it. that's an interesting -- is just so great that scholars, you know, established scholars, undergraduates, graduate students, even high school students can come here and read this. they have access to this original material that helps them really understand the published book. it's just very exciting to think about the kinds of research that can be done on this material that we have. included in the ken kesey papers is also all of the notes that he, the notes that survived when he was writing sometimes a great notion, and here are some examples of, he's working around the title that he wants to use. and then he hands all of these

notes that he, these have survived in the collection. there are fewer notes for one flew over the cuckoos nesbit mini mini notes that he kept when he was writing sometimes a great notion. and right here on this document, he's making a list of things that he's got going on in the story and he wants to at least write in debt and categorizing them s swing is exactly how is carrying on the story. again, more notes over here. i always find so interesting, figure later what it means and have that figured into his writing process i'm not quite sure, but try to make hank give up. this is the cry. here's the document where he is describing the character, viv. he says remember, sometimes hank and lee and is what else gets a great notion to jump into the river and drown.

so the river really, the great notion and the people forget this great notion, the river features large in his story. and here is the earliest manuscript for sometimes the great notion. it's also, people got through and is made some changes and corrections on that manuscript. when ken kesey and the merry pranksters got back from the road trip to new york, they threw a number of parties in san francisco that became known as the -- in 1965, ken kesey was arrested for marijuana possession, which seems so quaint nowadays, especially in oregon where marijuana is now legalized. but he went on the lam to

mexico, inc. he spent about eight months of their living in mexico. i guess he must have realized that that lifestyle was not sustainable for him, because his wife and children were back in the states. and so he surrendered himself, and his conviction was to spend i think about five months in the county jail. it was really a work camp. and while he was there, he did some writing in some artwork. my understanding is that the prisoners were not allowed to have paper, pencil, pins, colors and pain and so on. but friends smuggled in those supplies to him. in the five months that he was there, he wrote about his experiences into sheets of paper, so he created some of material while he was in the

jail. and it, i call it the jailhouse manuscript. there are survived 43 panels which we have in our collection. and as you can see they are day-glo, wild colors pick so we did some of the work while he was in the jail, and then after he got out he put them together in this collage form. it's kind of like an artist but in a way, you know. and so he wrote letters to faye. he talks about what they did during the day, what their work was picky talks about his relationship with the fellow prisoners. and again, my understanding is that this is the first time that he came to terms with his own racism. because most of the other inmates were african-americans, as a people have said that the jailhouse manuscript is really

his effort to deal with his own racism. this as part of the panels have been published into a book by viking, but there's clearly a lot of research that can still be done on this work. this resource, which is about, and measures about 150 linear feet of material, which is quite extensive. so what we have shown this is kind of like the tip of the iceberg for the ken kesey collection. i guess one of most important things for people to know is that this collection is an incredibly rich collection and both depth and scope that reflects the life and work of ken kesey. and these primary sources, the documents that were created at the time, something happened to ken kesey or something that he did, are essential to

scholarship on ken kesey and his writings. so these materials are available for people to use any kind of researcher can come here to use the collection and we are thrilled when people come to use the ken kesey papers. >> our visit to eugene, oregon, continues with a local author mark whalan as examines of the culture and lives of african americans during world war i in his book "the great war and the culture of the new negro." >> the name of my book is "the great war and the culture of the new negro" and i really decided to write that because i was interested in world war i answer levine from in england the kind of literature of world war i is a very famous, very widely read, taught in schools. it's part of the national conversation. it seemed like that was not true