Literature of the frontier, like jazz, is a particularly American phenomenon, as, it seems, is drug culture. Naturally, Ken Kesey -- known as much for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) as for leading the Merry Pranksters -- personified and confronted both the Western frontier and that of contemporary drug culture. For long, Kesey has been a cultural icon of 1960s America. Through a discussion of Jacques Derrida's philosophies of the past, and by focusing on Kesey's last novel, Last Go Round: A Real Western (1994), Alexandra Ganser unpacks Kesey's (and Ken Babb's) mythic West, and its haunting of the American imagination.

Spectral Riders: Multiple Heritage and the (De)Construction of History in Ken Kesey's Last Go Round [printable version]

Alexandra Ganser

<1> Ken Kesey's novel Last Go Round (1994) expands on the tradition of the tall-tale; the protagonist and first-person narrator Johnathan E. Lee Spain looks back on his life at the sickbed of a comatose black rodeo champion, re-membering his days of glory (as the winner of the first Pendleton Round-Up) and his manifold experiences during this weekend.

<2> In the novel, spirits and shadows from the past are in the center of attention as by confronting his past, Johnathan E. Lee Spain examines his multiple heritage and the role of the novel's two other major characters, Sundown Jackson and George Fletcher, in this context. In line with Derrida's reflections in Specters of Marx (1994), heritage in Last Go Round is presented not as a given but as a task, and is thus to be actively acquired. It is not a mere question of genetics; heritage is not simply the legacy of blood-relations, but of a multiple and contingent nature.

<3> As Kesey and his co-author Ken Babbs "[...] elect to conjure our three spectral riders out of the old tall tales [...] instead of the cold facts and half-baked truths served up by library stacks" (VII), they obviously do not agree with the common view that history can only be explored in dusty archives. Instead, the main sources for the writing of the novel, Kesey says, are "the old tall tales," i.e. oral versions of past events which do not necessarily call for historical accuracy. Oral documents of cultural memory are of particular importance for Last Go Round as the story is based on a tall-tale told by Kesey's father. In this view, the novel is itself a product of collective memory, of traces of an oral tradition which the author inherited from his ancestors.

<4> Writing a novel that apparently claims some relationship to history, or simply telling a story of the past, is thus a powerful possibility to (de)construct common views of history, i.e. to participate actively in a broad historical discourse. By (de)constructing History, Kesey's novel questions and subverts common notions of authenticity as well.

<5> The past can only be remembered -- even if the memories, as Johnathan admits, have "gone alarmingly dim" (1). When we relate a story of the past, our lapses of memory have to be filled by means of invention and imagination, a process which is not arbitrary, but informed by both our individual remembrance -- which Jan Assmann calls "communicative memory" -- and by what he calls cultural memory, after Henry Bergson's "mémoire collective," which is "oriented [...] by the fixed codifications and productions of a tradition that is independent from its subjects" [1].

<6> Both kinds of memory are interrelated in a dialectical and dynamic process: while personal memories are always embedded in a cultural context, the collective memory is dependent on the contributions of instances of individual remembrance. This process of aporetic oscillation between collective and personal instances of remembrance incessantly (de)constructs and reconstructs our view of the past and generates individual and often differing versions of past events. Reminiscent of the famous lines of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the narrator states in Last Go Round that his story of the first Round-Up "is not the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, certainly -- this is merely my version. Take it or leave it" (221) [2].

<7> Both forms of memory are involved in the dynamics of resignification, and thus are themselves concepts that are constructed within the dialectics of oblivion and renewal. In this context, Aleida Assmann observes that even written documents of the past are not to be seen as static, since they are subject to manifold processes of remembrance, reduction, or even oblivion. Assmann introduces the concept of traces as alternative media of cultural memory, because they produce the (involuntary) memory of an epoch by including not only textual documents but also any nonverbal (and thus not necessarily authorized) articulations of culture, especially remnants of oral tradition (106).

<8> Derrida's conceptualization of heritage complements these theories on memory in a dialectical process. The concept of heritage as a task (Derrida, 54) is concerned with what the individual contributes to a collective remembrance, while Assmann's theories emphasize what cultural/collective memory provides the individual with. In Kesey's Last Go Round, it is the narrator's task to work on and with this cultural memory as well as on/with both collective and personal legacies. The spirits that haunt the cultural memory as dealt with in Kesey's novel are embodied by Sundown Jackson, a Native American of the Nez Percé nation, and George Fletcher, a black cowboy. Since they are both victims of racial segregation and discrimination [3], these figures apparently represent the dark, unpleasant, and thus usually neglected parts of the collective memory of the United States. While George might be said to stand for the demons that haunt the formerly slave-holding Southern States, Sundown represents the dark side to "the Winning of the West."

<9> The story of the first Round-Up ends with young Johnathan passing the rodeo trophy to George Fletcher, thus making his peace and acknowledging the heritage he has been offered by his surrogate fathers. Old Johnathan does quite the same by telling his story, i.e. he offers his memories and his heritage to posterity. His final address at Drew Washington's bedside, however, emphasizes but the disturbing and disrupting nature of his Pendleton experiences:

[y]ep, you're branded, too, like it or not, live or die, recover or don't. Because the thrill doesn't come free, we all know that. Everybody has to pay the merry-go-round man with something; and the more you relish the ride, the more you have to pay. Sarah was what I paid for taking that last go round. I was the price she was charged for racing that last race. (237)

The ending of the novel slightly contrasts the story within the frame, which is by and large funny, energetic, and optimistic, and affirms racial and gender justice as well as human respect. The contrast is not taken to extremes, however, because the rodeo-story, too, ends tragically, as Johnathan rides off "bundled up by the half-open door, watching the snow whirls and feeling pretty blue and uncomfortable" (237).

<10> Although Johnathan, in his narrative function, eventually has paid off his debts to the shadows from the past and is thus expected to come to peace with himself, the end of the novel leaves both the protagonist and the reader unsatisfied. Why, one is tempted to ask, these bitter undertones and aftertaste?

<11> Johnathan's crisis of identity, which was triggered off by his return to Pendleton in the first place -- he is not only denied recognition as a rodeo star, but is even addressed as "Gramps" and considered a "tourist" by "the deputy sheriff and a pair of deputy deputies" (4), -- has not been resolved. Expectations were too high, it seems. He has not been able to relive, or regain, his "short high noon of fame" (237), and therefore must realize that his image as "rodeo star -- down on his luck a little, but on the mend" (ibid. 9) -- has become mere self-deception. The re/search into/for his multiple heritage has not been able to provide Old Johnathan with a unified sense of self; the narrator remains disappointed as he has to realize that in a postmodern world, the search for "being whole" cannot but lead to frustration.

Heritage as a Task

<12> It is the narrator's task in Last Go Round to confront himself with both the individual and the collective memory, and thus also with his personal and cultural heritage. The connection between these concepts -- memory and heritage -- seems obvious. Simply speaking, one can only inherit from the dead, to which one is consequently indebted. Being in debt to someone triggers off the desire to pay off one's debits and thus come to peace with the testator. But how can one make peace with the dead? This is the point where remembering (the dead) comes into play.

<13> By means of remembrance, the dead come to life again. Only when memory is, like the narrator's in Kesey's novel, sufficiently dim, do the dead appear as specters and ghosts. They haunt both the individual and the collective memory as spirits everybody has to live and deal with, "[a]nd this being-with specters would also be, not only but also, a politics of memory, of inheritance, and of generations." In the name of justice, one has to work with possible inheritances in a responsible manner (Derrida, XVIIIf.).

<14> "One never inherits without coming to terms with [...] some specter, and therefore with more than one specter," says Derrida (21) and points to the view that heritage is not given, not received passively (cf. 54), but rather has to be actively acquired. It has to be chosen, since there is never only one heritage but a heterogeneity (16) and variety of inheritances with which one can work. These are constituted not only by personal heritages, but also by the collective legacies within a specific cultural framework.

<15> Choosing and interpreting an inheritance is one of the main tasks of the heir in his/her mourning, and even of human existence as a whole. Life would be a blank without the legacies of our ancestors; in Derrida's words, "[t]o be [...] means [...] to inherit. All the questions on the subject of being or of what is to be (or not to be) are questions of inheritance" (54). He introduces the notion of "critical inheritance" (55) to refer to the possibility of choosing, of filtering out, of adopting and dismissing legacies. The act of inheriting, in this view, is just as creative a process as is the telling of a story based on memory.

<16> In Kesey's novel, Johnathan chooses from what George and Sundown offer; thus, he readily accepts and appreciates them as testators. The "principle of selectivity," (Derrida, 87) however, is always an act of both inclusion and exclusion of certain ancestral specters and thus touches on the ideological dimension. It is significant in this context that Derrida does not see the act of inheriting as arbitrary and contingent, as devoid of the legacies of one's own background and traditions, but as a political issue which he calls "spectropolitics." The individual makes spectropolitical decisions in that it "separates out the good from the bad 'ghosts'" (107).

<17> In Last Go Round, Johnathan as the narrator and protagonist is deeply entangled in the discourse of spectropolitics, and so are other major and minor characters -- e.g. Jackson and George when they confront themselves with Johnathan, who, due to his Southern descent, represents the dominant white culture (strictly speaking, the "oppressor"), or Sarah Meyerhoff, Johnathan's cowgirl love, when she claims to have Indian blood although her family is of Jewish-German origin.

<18> On a metanarrative level, Ken Kesey himself confronted his personal Western heritage by the writing of Last Go Round. Kesey's father used to take his son to the Pendleton Round-Up in northern Oregon (Faggen, 217) where Ken became acquainted with the rodeo "scene" and encountered Native Americans and their poor living conditions. He felt a strong compassion for those people when he saw that because of a dam project, "[t]he government had bought out their village, [and] moved them across the road where they built new shacks for them" (ibid.) [4]. These experiences are manifest in Last Go Round when the Natives of Pendleton are described as segregated into ghetto-like teepee-grounds, "fence[d] [...] off from the access road to the chutes" (5) during the rodeo. Because of Kesey's emphatic, complex constructions of Native figures throughout his work (e.g. Chief Bromden, the narrator of Cuckoo's Nest), he has been critically recognized as on of the first white writers to portray Native Americans other than as noble savages, doomed peoples, or indomitable beasts. In Derrida's sense of the concept, one could even claim that Native cultures are part of Kesey's cultural heritage

<19> While on a hunting trip, Kesey's father told his fourteen-year-old son the story of the first Pendleton Round-Up, "[a] marvelous yarn," as the reader is informed in the preface to Last Go Round (VIIIf.). Storytelling in general was an important pastime in Kesey's family, and in this context, especially his grandmother and his father would later influence the writer's literary style, which shows an affection for and interest in the tall tale. Kesey's ancestors on both sides of the family had gradually migrated West, moving from Tennessee to Oregon (Brown, 162), just like the protagonist in Last Go Round [5]. Tanner sees a strong correspondence between the family movement and the development of the tall tale:

[t]he pattern of migration of Kesey's ancestors corresponds with the westward movement of the tradition of Southwest humor and frontier oral tales. Both began in the middle southern states, and moved into Texas, Oklahoma, through Colorado, and into the Northwest. Kesey's artistic disposition derives to a large extent from this tradition. (Kesey, 139)

For a study of Last Go Round, this correspondence is significant especially because of the novel's style of narration, which "poses as an oral history of the first Round Up" (Mayer, "(Re-)Reading," 263). Representing a perfect blend of Southern and Western cultural heritages, the tall-tale is highly dependent on the memory of the storyteller(s).

<20> The legacies of popular culture and folk traditions influenced Kesey's writing to a high degree (cf. Tanner, Kesey, 25). In Last Go Round, this becomes clear as Kesey not only incorporates folk songs in the text, but also refers to famous historical figures of the world of sports or uses them as minor characters (e.g. the famous wrestler Frank Gotch) [6]. The rodeo setting itself, centering upon cowboy and cowgirl stardom, is an important part of the Western popular tradition. M. Gilbert Porter, who, while referring to the "attempts it [Last Go Round] makes to impose on history a spin of racial and gender justice," (178) characterizes the novel as follows: "Last Go Round is a [...] tale that enables Kesey to have some creative fund with the 'dime Western' style and apparently to pay off a cultural debt to his past" (177).

<21> The physical and spiritual experience of journeys and of the discovery of new territory and frontiers is another major thread running through Kesey's writings (cf. Mayer, "Kerouac," 88). In Last Go Round, the significance of such an experience is one of the major motifs of the story. The protagonist has to leave behind his Southern home and his family ties in order to experience his self; he -- in Huck Finn's words -- has to "light out for the territory" in order to develop a self-governed conception of identity, a task that includes the appropriation of a multiple heritage.

<22> Kesey shows a prime interest in the Oregon past in his writing of a semi-historical novel set in 1911. The date is significant because it places the action in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural post-frontier environment (Mayer, "(Re-)Reading," 279) [7], which Kesey (re-) examines and (de-)constructs in the course of Last Go Round.

<23> Because of Kesey's being embedded in a regional "ethos," critics have frequently termed him a "regionalist" writer (e.g. Deringer, 351). Beginning in the early 1990s, however, the concept of regionalism as based on the idea of a unified, comprehensive region's nature and cultural character has also undergone much criticism. Harold Simonson, for example, dismisses the conceptualization of a region as an imaginative and unique geographical place of escape (4), and he considers a sense of home not simply as a given heritage, but as an achievement. When Simonson says that "sensing real placement requires effort," he clearly recalls Derrida's conception of heritage (174). Other critics even go further and see Kesey as a part of postregional literature, which emphasizes the complexity and diversity of any region, and the fluid nature of concepts of regional culture or ethos (e.g. Etulain, 208f.).

Specters of Surrogate Fathers

<24> Ken Kesey draws on a traditional motif of Western literature in Last Go Round in that he depicts Johnathan Spain as the inexperienced tenderfoot who sets out West in order to search for experience and an identity. He modifies this motif, however, because Spain is not an Easterner heading w/West but a Southerner, which is important information considering his "original" cultural heritage or "blood-lineage."

<25> Spain comes from near Nashville, Tennessee, and apparently was born into a yeoman farming family as "the youngest of the six Spain boys [...] and the youngest of the whole family except for my little sister" [8].His last name reflects the aristocratic de Spain lineage of Jefferson, Mississippi [9], and he accordingly behaves in a traditional Southern chivalric manner -- referring to himself as a "knight alone" (135) and "a shining knight from Nashville" (167). Nonetheless, his story implies that he cannot be of upper-class descent [10]. Only seventeen years old, Johnathan can no longer be provided for by his family, and thus has to make a living by himself already as a teenager. However, the protagonist transforms this economic burden into a kind of freedom which allows him to leave behind his state and family.

<26> Taking this freedom as a chance to gain experience and to make his way, he "[...] was gonna rove north, I vowed, and keep on a-roving till I reached whatever real frontier was still left in our swiftly settling nation" (11). Proud of being the first of his family "to cross the Mason-Dixon Line," (9) Johnathan does not quite know what lies ahead of him, but "in any case, he is not particularly inclined to carry on the whole cultural baggage imposed on him by his background" (Mayer, "(Re-)Reading," 279). His conscious decision to leave behind his family ties, which also implies a deliberate distancing from his Southern heritage, makes him apt to develop a self-governed identity and to acquire legacies which are chosen, not given.

<27> Nevertheless, the specters that haunt Old Johnathan's mind imply that it is impossible to completely leave behind the whole of his Southern heritage, as he took with him the shadows of the South on his journey to the West. Neither the American South nor the West in Last Go Round is depicted as "the land of the free," or a free land itself (cf. Carnes, 24), for both regions are inhabited by their respective demons. They eventually take on human shape when Johnny meets the black cowboy and the Nez Percé Indian.

<28> In search of experience, young Johnathan's trip to the West and the following days in Pendleton become a weekend of "firsts," (88) including crucial initiations to an active participation in American myth, history, and heritage. The story tells of the first time Johnathan gambles, smokes a cigar, receives spiritual illumination when he drinks jimson weed tea, participates in a rodeo, falls in love, and, in a general sense, comes into contact with other religions and cultures.

<29> The term "initiation" in its plural is used deliberately here, as it evokes time-worn concepts of initiation (which are suspicious because of their inherent affirmation of dichotomous power structures) in the singular form. The importance of the concept of "initiations" in all of Kesey's writings is termed "the frontier paradigm" by Mark Busby:

[a]t the center [...] we find the frontier paradigm. An innocent figure [...] undergoes an initiatory experience that grows out of the elements he confronts in the transformed wilderness he faces. (98, emphases mine)

Still, it is important to note that initiation, in my conception of the term, neither means the acceptance into some kind of pre-existing (sub-)society, nor the acquisition of a certain status, such as "adulthood," or "manhood." Kesey himself subverts and ridicules the concept by a linguistic relocation of the term (cf., e.g., chapter 10, which is entitled "A Certain Amount of Initiation," 101 [emphasis mine]), and thus destroys the "either/or" connotation of the concept. Johnathan's initiation manifests itself in his becoming an active part of Western history (i.e. an historical subject). Only in this context can his efforts to construct and deconstruct myth, history, and heritage be located.

<30> Along with his increasing amount of experience, the protagonist is more and more detached (though never completely separated) from his white Southern heritage. As might be expected, this process appears to him as a loss of identity at first:

[t]he longer I was here, it occurred to me, the more I was getting shed of everything I called my own: my bankroll, my bedroll, even my given name. What would they think back home? That I had been relieved of my senses and my sensibilities and by booty to boot. (62)

At the same time, however, he realizes the positive effects of his transformation as he "was becoming a man of the world" (52); he loses his tenderfoot status and eventually even becomes a rodeo celebrity. In the course of this transformatory process, he selectively adopts some frontier legacies (such as the values of self-reliance, self-assertion, and self-confidence) and overlooks others (e.g. violence, racist notions, or "loner"-hood). The acquisition of a multiple heritage, made up of elements from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, eventually turns out to be a gain in perspective and insight.

<31> Johnathan's friendship with Jackson Sundown and George Fletcher is highly significant in the context of the selection of an inheritance. The by-chance process of (conscious or unconscious) electing one another as friends involves the three characters in a process of give and take; they bequeath and receive multiple legacies.

<32> Johnathan remembers his immediate awareness of the significance of their friendship shortly after their first meeting, when he says that "[i]t didn't take me long to appreciate what a rare pair had sailed into my life" (13). Their friendship marks the starting point for Johnathan's development as he begins to inherit actively only after their acquaintance. The protagonist is taken on by George and Jackson as a son -- George even calls him "Johnny Reb Nashville, the Third," (33) electing him as his quasi-official successor in the rodeo ranks of stardom. They provide him with their teachings and, in a distinct paternal (yet not patronizing!) manner, stir his will to gain self-experience, as is shown when George tells Johnathan:

[t]ake this as another lesson, schoolboy. Another valuable lesson in the course of your education. [...] The subject [...] is experience. The only subject you eager Southern boys is ever interested in. [...] Of course nobody ever learns about experience without they experience what they're learning first. Not even eager Southern boys. (97) [11]

Johnathan "literally acquires two fathers, one black and one red" (Mayer, "(Re-) Reading," 279). By accepting George and Jackson as his surrogate fathers, the protagonist simultaneously chooses their legacies as his own, which is expressed in the novel both by symbolic actions (e.g. the exchange of Johnathan's boots, 36) and by the fact that he takes on and combines their wild-bronc riding techniques: "sit loose like George Fletcher and at the same time stay composed like Sundown Jackson" (114).

<33> The noted exchange and return of Johnathan's beloved cowboy boots, with the symbolic Confederate flag of the old South "tooled into their leather fronts," (9) is significant not only because it strengthens the bond between the characters, but also because it symbolically shows that the act of inheriting is a two-way process, a give and take. The same holds true when George offers his "toiletries" to his friends (139), or when the Chinese laundry girl Sue Lin takes Johnathan's clothes and hands them back after washing (98).

<34> The way Last Go Round constructs multiple heritages implies that different ethnic cultures are influenced by each other and, by deliberately working with these influences, also benefit from one another. Johnathan's heritage does not primarily consist of frontier values -- which he could have inherited from any cowboy, any Westerner. Tolerance and openness, a sense of morals and of justice not stained by racial prejudice qualify Johnathan's frontier notions of self-reliance and physical strength -- concepts that are traditionally generated by and associated with the white Westerner. A black cowboy and a Native American broncobuster seem to be predestined to teach him this unusual combination.

<35> As members of minority groups and victims of both racial segregation and discrimination, Jackson and George represent the dark and thus usually neglected parts of the collective memory of the United States. This is also shown in the naming of both characters: apart from the fact of the historical existence of both the figures, it is noteworthy that Black Panther activist George Jackson, combining in his name George Fletcher and Jackson Sundown, was mentioned by Kesey in an interview of 1992:

[George Jackson] had been caught and put in jail and somehow managed to get a gun to the throat of the judge attempting to flee the courtroom. [...] They'll let blow away 15 judges to shoot this one black guy. It's more important to shoot George Jackson than to preserve the judges [sic!] life. (Gerald, 4)

This name, thus, can be seen as representing racial oppression and discrimination by a white hegemonic system.

<36> Giving somebody a name is an important act of power, which becomes apparent in Last Go Round when, in a most degrading manner, George is termed "Niggar George" and Sundown "Injun Jack Sundown" on Oliver Nordstrum's tote board (20). Derogatory names for minorities appear throughout the novel, but are not always left uncommented; the reaction to the chalkboard insult (25) is one of the less violent ones: in the process of placing their bets both Fletcher and Sundown reappropriate their names by verbally wagering money on themselves under the names "Mister George Fletcher" and "Jackson Sundown, Nation of the Nez Perce."

<37> White stereotyping does not refrain from branding a minority's identity in this scene, since Nez Percé (i.e. French for "Pierced Nose") itself is a misnomer generated by the Lewis and Clark expedition team of 1805. The tribe calls itself Nee-me-poo (i.e. "the People") and never practiced nose piercing [12]. A conflict of ethnic identity on the grounds of naming is apparent in the figure of Jackson Sundown, whose appellation -- by others as well as by himself -- remains inconsistent throughout the novel. Fletcher tries to stir Sundown's self-esteem and self-consciousness in this respect when he hints at his being misnamed at the last go round (207f.).

<38> Johnathan breaks this white stereotyping -- to which he himself is not immune -- when he takes an interest in both Sundown's (57) and George's (69) life stories. He is willing to learn about their diverse cultural and personal heritages and gradually combines elements of both. This cross-cultural exchange strengthens the self-respect of all three broncobusters; nevertheless, it is the youngest of the three, Johnathan himself, to whose growth attention is drawn. As Mayer states, this development of the "hero" is characteristic for Kesey:

Kesey's weak, but growing, heroes only come to an understanding of their existence, come to assume an active role in their own lives [...], after they have been shown the way by a self-assertive, near-legendary hero-figure of tragic proportions [...]. (Mayer, "Kerouac," 178)

Last Go Round projects two such hero-figures, two fathers who alter the protagonist's state of mind and being. His indebtedness to his surrogate fathers expresses itself in his retrospective account of the first Pendleton weekend, in which he brings to life again, and thus pays his tribute to, Jackson Sundown and George Fletcher. Telling the "true" story of the first Pendleton Round-Up that everybody else seems to neglect (6), he expresses his gratitude, thanking his surrogate fathers not only for their support and friendship but also for their symbolic legacies.

<39> The narrative techniques Kesey uses in Last Go Round confirm the (de-)construction of heritage in the novel. Kesey establishes a frame narration, i.e. the story of Old Johnathan Spain who returns to Pendleton sometime in the 1970s, is taken to the hospital when he faints, and subsequently sits at the bedside of the black rodeo favorite Drew Washington, where he tells (him) the whole story of the first Round-Up because Drew obviously reminds him of George Fletcher. Thus, the reader gets the story of the 1911 rodeo contest exclusively through the first-person narrator's mind, which is per definitionem unreliable, but increasingly so because of the distance between the time of action and of telling the story.

<40> This time gap is responsible for Johnathan's lapses and the dimness of his remembrance, which he frequently admits. Nevertheless, the lively story, stuffed with countless (and often historical) details and minute descriptions, lures the reader into forgetting that it is told retrospectively, i.e. that Johnathan looks back on his life, "...back to another time as well, another train of thought: steam ... whistling down the rusty rails of my memory" (8).

<41> By this particular mode of narration -- memory and its (filled) gaps being the main sources of information -- Johnathan is able to conjure up the ghosts of the dead and make them live again in his remembrance. This is the only potential way to confront his personal past and the specters that still haunt him, and thus also the only way to come to peace with their legacies. The temporal distance makes it possible for Johnathan to reflect on his own life and on his heritage; the fact that this weekend of 1911 figures so prominently in his memory suggests that the first Round-Up was the most crucial event in this respect, overshadowing the rest of his life. The significance of the weekend definitely lies in his becoming a star, as he tells Drew at the closing of the novel:

I thought of myself, always, as a rodeo star -- down on his luck a little, but on the mend, on the road back to the top. Maybe you always think of yourself as what you were in that short high noon of fame, not what you are all the rest of the long twilight and dark. (237)

The impact of this short stardom on Johnathan's sense of self is deeply entangled with his surrogate fathers, who have endowed him with much more than just stardom. The days in Pendleton have become so meaningful for Old Johnathan because they were crucial for his acquisition of a heritage of his own device.

<42> However, the weekend becomes meaningful only by the act of being remembered. At the time of the action, Johnathan would have lacked the distance needed to realize and reflect on its significance. By means of a narrative construction based on memory, the narrator both traces back and questions his self-conceived identity on the one hand, but also creates a legacy for posterity on the other. It is noteworthy that Ken Kesey himself adopted this view on the significance of telling one's story. Gordon Lish writes of

[...] the central statement of his [Kesey's] personality: that man must cut an image of himself into the granitic indifference of this world; that he must be a maker of mysteries and legends, thereby increasing himself and diminishing the "fiercities" of a bewildering universe [...]. (17)

(De-)Constructing History

<43> Spirits and specters do not only play an important part in Johnathan's story, they also operate on a metanarrative level. Last Go Round deals with a revitalization of days long gone, but does not try to authenticate a popular historic event; instead, it actively constructs and deconstructs memories of the past. As one reviewer stated -- producing a bit of incidental insight: "[t]he events in Ken Kesey's new book actually happened. Well, sort of, which is why 'Last Go Round' [sic!] is fiction and not history" (Nicholson). Kesey, thus, attaches a new meaning and significance to an episode of Western history which otherwise would be exposed to oblivion.

<44> Johnathan is involved in a dialectical process (which nicely interrelates Aleida and Jan Assmann's theories and those of Derrida's Specters of Marx): on the one hand, he is supplied with a vast possible heritage by collective/cultural memory and its countless spirits and specters, while on the other it is his individual task to (s)elect from these legacies, and to face the shadows from the past. By his active involvement in these complementary processes, the protagonist produces both his story as well as history.

<45> It is important to note that in Last Go Round, Kesey does not affirm traditional concepts of the making of History, whose goal it usually is -- according to Leopold von Ranke -- to reconstruct events from the past wie es eigentlich gewesen. He dismisses History as based on notions of objectivity and on "authentic" historical documents. As Helmut Lethen shows in his essay "Versionen des Authentischen" of 1996, concepts of documentary authenticity are highly problematic since they always involve some kind of authority. The notion of authenticity in the postmodern sense, then, is but a constructed concept, i.e. it is not grounded in the "naturalness" of things but always subject to authority and social practice [13].

<46> Kesey embraces this opinion by dismissing "authentic" reality as a subject for writing. In an interview with Gordon Lish, he asked:

[w]ell, isn't it dishonest for a writer to try to convince people that things really happened as he describes them? The very act of writing, even reporting that attempts to pass as objective, is an exercise in selection, picking and choosing this over that [...]. An artist who claims to portray life lies. (Lish, 20)

Kesey affirms this view by his subversive use of the concept of authenticity in Last Go Round, deliberately playing with the reader's expectations of an "authentic" historical novel. The novel's subtitle reads A Real Western and evokes at the same time associations with "reel" Westerns, while in fact it deconstructs the notion of reality (or history) based on authenticity.

<47> There are countless instances in the novel which can be taken as subverting authenticity. Consider, for example, the three main characters' historical and fictional dimensions in Last Go Round: they are historical in that they bear their "real" names (except for Spain, whose first name, John, is altered to Johnathan E. Lee), and their respective participations in the first Round-Up are in part reconstructions of historical events. A report on the real-life George Fletcher, for example, states that he

[...] was the best bronco rider. The crowd knew it. George knew it. The horses definitely knew it. But the 1911 Pendleton Round-Up judges couldn't bring themselves to give a black man the prize saddle. The fans were in such an uproar they tore Fletcher's hat up in pieces, sold them, and used the money to buy him the saddle. (Wildbill Productions, 1, emphasis mine)

Kesey's historical accuracy becomes obvious, but considering the detail italicized in the quote, the fictional element is not negligible either, since in the novel it is not the fans who tear up George's hat (226f.) but Nadine Rose, a reporter from Salt Lake City, who is infuriated by Buffalo Bill's racist behavior towards George.

<48> Kesey's strategy throughout the novel is to give the impression that the story is historically authentic while at the same time disrupting this impression both in the story itself and on a metanarrative level. His narrator tells the reader to "[l]ook it [the story] up," while some lines later he refers to "cloudy disputing versions that came out in the newspapers" (231); the author calls the novel a "real" Western [14], while the preface emphasizes its fictionality: "[i]f we offend the facts with our tall tale, pray accept our contrition and our excuse: A short little stub of a tale just would not serve" (X).

<49> Kesey's use of photographic material and the form of the tall tale must be seen in this same context. For according to Helmut Lethen, not even photographs can be called "authentic," i.e., said to merely reproduce the situation they depict, since on the one hand, the photographer's eye subjectively selects what is "worth" capturing, and on the other, the outcome highly depends on the technical equipment of a specific camera (210f.).

<50> Ken Babbs, Kesey's long-time collaborator, friend, and fellow Merry Prankster, selected and commented 26 documentary black-and-white pictures as illustrations for Kesey's story. The photos show the "original," "historical" figures of many characters of the novel (John Spain, Jackson, George; the wrestler Frank Gotch, Buffalo Bill Cody, Parson Montanic, and three cowgirls) as well as some historical shots of Pendleton. At first glance, the reader is tempted to take these pictures as proof for the authenticity of Johnathan's story of the first Round-Up, but considering Lethen's line of argument in combination with what Kesey says about "cold facts" in the preface to Last Go Round (VII), traditional notions of authenticity are not helpful for an accessing this (postmodern) novel. The pictures become "factional" because they are ascribed a certain function by Kesey and Babbs; they do not stand for themselves but serve as intertextual (or, rather, supratextual) support for the subversion of the concept of authenticity.

<51> Ken Kesey made similar use of a photo-album in Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), where the reader is invited to "[...] come look: [...] and look: [...]" (1). According to Mayer, the picture gallery takes on a life of its own and thus constitutes one dimension of imaginative reality:

[r]eality is just another notion, in the way the photo-album takes on a life of its own, becoming at the same time more than there is to "reality," and less because "reality" is determined by an act of the imagination [...]. ("Kerouac," 87)

The photographs, thus, are never mere copies of reality, but represent reality's fragmented nature. In the specific fictional context of Last Go Round, they point to the fragmentation of memory and remembrance. Even if this might happen on second inspection only, the pictures invite the reader to participate in an active (de-) construction of a past reality.

<52> Not only by incorporating photographic documents do Kesey and Babbs deliberately play with readers' notions of authenticity and of history, but also by means of literary form are these concepts deconstructed and subverted. Kesey's comment in the preface -- "[t]his is why we elect to conjure our three spectral riders out of the old tall tales, told over hot coffee around a warm campfire, instead of the cold facts and half-baked truths served up by library stacks" (VII) -- points to his fundamental doubt about any account of an event which is based on "cold facts" alone. It seems that for Kesey, it is questionable whether grounding a story predominantly in what has come to be represented as historical fact necessarily classifies it as "true" or "real."

<53> Kesey's use of the tall-tale as a basis for the narration of Last Go Round supports his notion of reality, since frontier stories in this tradition are characterized by their blending of what is considered "historical fact" and fiction (cf. Tanner, Kesey, 48). According to Elaine Safer, the fictionality of reality is a fitting subject for a (post)modern tall-tale (cf. 151); by the use of materials from the past, postmodern literature both mocks the present and shows its doubts about (re)presentations of the past. Such writings use "allusions to traditional values that literature depicts as part of our American and Western heritage, and then they make the pursuit of these values the subject of farce" (21).

<54> In Last Go Round, Kesey mocks present-day representations of The Old West and debunks many of its myths and legends (e.g. the heroic quality of Buffalo Bill). This deconstruction of The West is followed by the construction of a new picture which does not claim to be wholly "true" or "authentic," but rather affirms a strong sense of fictionalized reality born out of the subjectivity of the narrator's mind.

<55> Like in his former novels, Kesey therefore relies heavily on the individual's imagination, which is considered the only human resource that can be used to create some sense of truth. "Cold facts," thus, are not decisive in this creation; rather, it is the blending of (the fiction of) "fact" and fiction in the narrator's mind and the filtering of those "facts" through his memory, imagination, and intelligence, which produce his story and consequently also the reality of the novel. According to Stephen Tanner, Kesey

suggests that fact and fiction blend well and both are essential in presenting "the true Happening of the moment." Merely to report as a camera does is just touching the surface [...]. [W]hat he tells is "the truth even if it didn't happen." (Tanner, "Western American Context," 297) [15]

The dimness of the narrator's remembrance is substantial in that it fuels his imagination, which is, as I have suggested, crucial in making the novel "real." Since he cannot rely on the accuracy of his memories of the weekend, Johnathan has to make up (for) what is missing in his mind by imaginative invention.

<56> The holes between the "facts" Old Johnathan remembers are filled with his fiction; history, then, is actively constructed in the narrator's vision, and traditional concepts of "authentic," "accurate," and "objective" history are once again dismissed as impossible or even useless for a writer. Johnathan obviously cannot present (past) reality without bringing in his imagination, even though he is an eye-witness of the event he places in the center of his narration.

<57> Since the human mind incessantly works as a filter for perception and is furthermore unable to process the complexity of any situation as a whole -- also because the mind is determined by the individual's sociocultural and personal history -- the concept of "objective" or "true" history has been abandoned by postmodern theory:

[...] [the] devaluation of the cognitive authority of history can be regarded as part of a larger process of delegitimation observable in all Western societies, a process affecting explanatory systems, ideologies, religious creeds, and the cultural heritage, eroding their previously unquestioned potential and exposing their construct character as man-made [...]. (Kunow, 168)

The fictional quality of this new conception of history, which is based on the dismissal of authorial sanction, is expressed in Last Go Round when Johnathan reveals "a little trick I have discovered to tell the difference between true history and false; the True [sic] is generally uncertain, wishy-washy, vague, while the False [sic] is often downright positive" (41). The capitalization of "True" and "False" implies that these attributes are assessments of some authority. True might turn out to be false (and vice versa), as we can see when Johnathan tells the story of "that famous wrong-angled courthouse" (ibid.) of Pendleton.

<58> The limited perspective of Kesey's first-person narrator makes clear that history in his conception is not to be capitalized (i.e. authorized). In his view, the deconstruction of "objective" History for the sake of a subjective account of any historical event is more rewarding; paradoxically, a personalized version makes history both more credible and reliable.

<59> Nevertheless, Kesey implies that it is equally important to mark a subjective reconception of history as such when his narrator states that "this is not the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, certainly -- this is merely my version" (221). Raymond Olderman, in his study of the American novel of the 1960s, emphasizes the significance of such a statement [16]:

[t]he constructed vision, extreme and violent only in order to assure us that fiction and fantasy are not only mingled with fact, but are distinguishable only because the artist has made his construction obvious -- [...] this is the vision of the fabulist of the sixties [...]. (174)

This being and making aware of the fictional nature of any (hi)story is incorporated in Last Go Round in the process of Johnathan's telling, as he continuously reminds the reader of the dimness of his memories: "one event dissolving into the next like shadows into smoke [...]. [T]hat day's events are lit so strange [sic] in my memories (136); '[m]y turn is mostly a blur [...] (218); '[a]ll I have is that blurry smear across a black-and-white background, back and forth, up and down" (220). Kesey, thus, reminds us to look behind the facades of ostensible authenticity and to be aware of the constructed nature of any story -- of history, of reality itself.

Conclusions

<60> Kesey deliberately deconstructs all-too-common representations of The Old West, which are mainly based on mythical simplifications, ethnic and Other stereotypes, and the assumption that History is to be trusted as sanctioned by authority. This authority is rendered suspicious and even unnecessary in Last Go Round, where the narrator presents his version of history through the dimness of his memory. Although he is also the protagonist in the story of the first Pendleton Round-Up and may thus be assumed to be a reliable eye-witness, the reader's attention is continuously drawn to the fictional nature of his account, which by extension implies that any story, and any version of history, is always fictional to some extent.

<61> In his retrospective account, the narrator constructs his heritages out of a confrontation with specters from the past that still haunt him in his old days. Johnathan, like Prince Hamlet, conjures up the ghosts of his fathers and makes them live again in his memories. The retrospective telling of the story of the first Pendleton Round-Up through the eyes and senses of Johnathan Spain's memory also mirrors perfectly the (de-)constructive nature of the act of inheriting that Jacques Derrida claimed in Specters of Marx. Kesey is in line with Derrida, telling us of the responsibility to (s)elect a (multiple) heritage from what history has to offer, and thus of the task of preventing a repetition of history. Choosing to tell, in both Derrida's and Kesey's vision, means just as well choosing to inherit.

[with thanks to k.]

Notes

[1] Cf. Böhme et al., 149-153; my translation and emphasis. [^]

[2] Kesey himself expressed this view in what he said about Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, his 1960's account of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters: "[h]is memory may be good, but it's his memory and not mine" (Faggen, 212). [^]

[3] Cf. the Indian village in Pendleton, which is depicted as separated from the "white" village in a ghetto-like manner; or the attack on George and his home (157-159). [^]

[4] Cf. also Tanner, "Western American Context," 310f. [^]

[5] Cf. Mayer, "(Re-)Reading," 278. [^]

[6] It is noteworthy here that Kesey himself was an excellent wrestler in his high school days and thus was familiar with the world of sports (cf. Tanner, Kesey, 8). [^]

[7] The frontier was declared closed in 1893, although many frontier regions were far from being completely settled. As James D. Houston notes, "in Oregon and Washington the frontier lasted longer than almost anywhere else in the U.S. excepting Alaska" (329); he furthermore terms the decade after 1900 the "homesteading period" of Oregon history (330). [^]

[8] Obviously, women are neither regarded as autonomous subjects nor granted agency in the Southern yeoman society Johnathan comes from. [^]

[9] This information is provided by William Faulkner, quoted in Mayer, "(Re-)Reading," 278. The influence of Faulkner on Kesey's writings is examined in detail in the same essay. [^]

[10] His self-presentation as "highborn" (151) might be an instance of self-deception. Compared to "an Indian brave, a Negro man, and a Hebrew girl" (ibid.), he is of course "highborn," which is the image he has of himself. However, he qualifies this social evaluation when he says that he "never cared a fig about impressing" bluebloods and highborns (ibid.). [^]

[11] Kesey's personal view is presented through these words of George Fletcher, setting apart what can be taught and what cannot. In an interview with Robert Faggen, Kesey said that "[t]he most important lesson is also the most ironic: most of what is important cannot be taught except by experience" (212). [^]

[12] For a large-scale history of the Nez Percé nation, see Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. [^]

[13] Cf. also Klinkowitz, XII-XVII. [^]

[14] Calling the novel a "real Western" is indeed daring, as any Western -- from James Fenimore to Gary Cooper -- is by definition fictional. [^]

[15] The last part of the quotation is one of the most famous statements of Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: "you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen" (8). [^]

[16] Cf. also Davis, 116. [^]

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