The Further Inquiry was published by Viking Press in 1990 and is Kesey’s account of the Merry Pranksters’ legendary 1964 cross-country bus trip — the journey from La Honda, California to the World’s Fair in New York on a painted International Harvester school bus named “Furthur” (sic), driven by Neal Cassady, that became the founding myth of the American counterculture. The book combines screenplay-format narrative, photographs, and Kesey’s retrospective commentary into a multimedia document that is part history, part mythology, part self-reckoning.
The Book
The structure is unusual: Kesey frames the bus trip narrative as a trial — a “further inquiry” into the meaning and consequences of the Prankster experiment, twenty-six years after the fact. The bus trip itself is presented in screenplay format, with photographs from the actual journey (many never previously published) illustrating the text.
The trial frame allows Kesey to both celebrate and interrogate the Prankster era: were they liberators or irresponsible? Did the acid experiments expand consciousness or damage minds? What happened to all those people afterward? The tone alternates between nostalgic celebration and genuine self-criticism — Kesey acknowledges casualties, acknowledges excess, acknowledges the gap between the myth and the reality.
Context
Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) had told the Prankster story from a journalist’s perspective. The Further Inquiry is Kesey’s own version — inevitably different, inevitably more sympathetic to the participants, and inevitably more aware of what was lost.
The book appeared at a moment when 1960s nostalgia was reaching a new peak (the twenty-fifth anniversary of Woodstock was approaching), and it functions partly as Kesey’s attempt to control his own legend — to tell the story himself rather than leaving it entirely to Wolfe’s version.
Collecting The Further Inquiry
First edition (Viking Press, New York, 1990): Large-format cloth binding with dust jacket. Photographs throughout.
Identification points:
- Viking Press imprint
- “First Edition” stated
- Large format (photographs reproduced at generous size)
- Screenplay format text
Market values: Fine copies in dust jacket bring $50–$150. The large format and photographic content make fine copies somewhat uncommon (shelving damage, jacket tears).
Signed copies: $200–$500. Kesey promoted the book at events associated with the revival of the Further bus.
The book’s primary collecting appeal is its photographic content — images from the original bus trip that are unavailable elsewhere — and its status as Kesey’s definitive account of the event that made him a cultural icon.