Caverns (novel)
Encyclopedia
Caverns is a 1989 novel written collaboratively as an experiment by Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey
Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...

 and a creative writing class that he taught at the University of Oregon
University of Oregon
-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...

. The cover of the book says it was written by O.U. Levon—the name of this supposed author, spelled backwards, is "novel U.O." (University of Oregon). The full list of authors is: Robert Blucher, Ben Bochner, James Finley, Jeff Forester, Bennett Huffman, Lynn Jeffress, Ken Kesey, Neil Lidstrom, H. Highwater Powers, Jane Sather, Charles Varani, Meredith Wadley, Lidia Yukman and Ken Zimmerman.

Background

Though still a counter culture icon, by the 1980s Kesey's writing output had slowed significantly. In 1988–89 he agreed to spend a year teaching a creative writing class at the University of Oregon
University of Oregon
-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...

. Kesey decided the best way to teach the course would be for the class of 13 graduate students to actually produce a novel when they assembled, twice a week, at Kesey's home.

Kesey laid forth two rules: first, the students could not discuss the plot of the novel with anyone outside of the class; second, for voting purposes Kesey comprised 50 percent of the class, a controlling majority to prevent the class getting "drawn into a lot of democratic discussion", as he told an interviewer. The class soon developed a third rule: there could be no writing outside of class. All work was to be done collaboratively, to help prevent the novel from developing 13 different prose styles. Kesey described his role in the process as quarterback of a football team. The class successfully completed the book, which was published in December 1989.

Plot

According to Kesey's "Introduction," the novel was inspired by an actual news clipping, an Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

 story on October 31, 1964 entitled "Charles Oswald Loach, Doctor of Theosophy and discoverer of so-called 'SECRET CAVE OF AMERICAN ANCIENTS,' which stirred archaeological controversy in 1928."

The rest of the novel appropriates Loach as its central character. Set in the 1930s, Loach is imagined as a convicted murderer (he killed a photographer to protect the secret of the cave) who is released from San Quentin Prison
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin State Prison is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men in unincorporated San Quentin, Marin County, California, United States. Opened in July 1852, it is the oldest prison in the state. California's only death row for male inmates, the largest...

, in the custody of a priest, to lead an expedition to rediscover the cave.

The novel—described by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

as Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones
Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...

 meets The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...

—features a motley crew of characters: Father Paul, an unbalanced priest; an archaeologist, Dr. Jocelyn Crane; Loach's brother, a museum curator; publisher Rodney Makai and the "Blavatskian
Madame Blavatsky
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , was a theosophist, writer and traveler. Between 1848 and 1875 Blavatsky had gone around the world three times. In 1875, Blavatsky together with Colonel H. S. Olcott established the Theosophical Society...

 Makai sisters"; their African-American driver, Ned; and Juke and Boyle, World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 veterans still suffering the ill effects of mustard gas.

The characters spend most of the novel together in a military vehicle making their way to Utah where Loach says the cave is located, and getting caught in various comic misadventures along the way.

Composite novel

The idea of the composite novel or collaborative fiction
Collaborative fiction
Collaborative fiction is a form of writing by a group of authors who share creative control of a story.Collaborative fiction can occur for commercial gain, as part of education, or recreationally - many collaboratively written works have been the subject of a large degree of academic research.-...

 was not new. In 1872 Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...

 wrote a book Six of One by Half a Dozen of the Other with five other authors about three mismatched couples searching for their proper mates. A dozen authors, including Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

, William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...

 and Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was a prominent 19th century American author.- Biography :She was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for one year, from 1870–71...

 collaborated to write The Whole Family
The Whole Family
The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors is a collaborative novel told in twelve chapters, each by a different author. This unusual project was conceived by novelist William Dean Howells and carried out under the direction of Harper's Bazaar editor Elizabeth Jordan, who would write one of the...

, with each author writing from the perspective of a different family member. Another famous composite novel was Naked Came the Stranger
Naked Came the Stranger
Naked Came the Stranger is a 1969 novel written as a literary hoax poking fun at contemporary American culture. Though credited to "Penelope Ashe", it was in fact written by a group of twenty-four prominent journalists led by Newsday columnist Mike McGrady...

, a book written by 24 journalists to be deliberately incoherent but still prove that any novel with sex sells.

The work of Kesey and his class departed from previous composite novels by having the thirteen class members and Kesey collaboratively write each sentence. Of the methodology, Alfred Bendixen wrote in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

that "The book shows that a group of apprentice writers can collaborate and produce a highly readable tale in a relatively short period of time. But Caverns also reminds us - sometimes painfully - that the novel requires an individual voice, fully realized characters and a clear sense of time and place."

Critical reception

Because of Kesey's attachment to the project, the book was widely reviewed in newspapers and magazines. Critics were generally intrigued by the book but ultimately critical of its shortcomings: noting in particular the lack of a coherent voice and a too-large cast of characters. Writing in The Los Angeles Times, Bob Sipchen noted, "Caverns is an amusing lark, full of weird characters and goofy plot twists. It was a sufficiently intriguing project to make The Mainstream Media swarm around Kesey again. But no one is calling Caverns literature."
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