When Writers Go Weird: That time Ken Kesey faked his suicide.

Are writers ever normal? No, otherwise they'd be productive members of society. 'When Writers Go Weird' is when we remember writers acting strange, odd, off, or--yeah--just plain weird. Also known as Tuesday to them.

Today: That time Ken Kesey faked his suicide.

Contrary to what Hollywood would make you believe, faking your own death to get out of something isn't a common occurrence. This is because faking your death is hard work with you still being alive and all.

Kesey thinking up ways to not kill himself.

This brings us to Ken Kesey. Kesey--who looked like a middle-aged patron in a South Boston back alley bar--is in that group of one-hit wonder authors, but with only a fraction of the fame of your J.D. Salingers and Harper Lees. He wrote more, it's just that none of it was memorable. His most notable work was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a massive hit made even more popular with its 1975 film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson.

Kesey sprung to critical and commercial success in his mid-twenties for Cuckoo, which was partly inspired by his time spent in an illegal medical trial run by the CIA for psychoactive drugs run. The trial tested drugs like LSD, cocaine, and mescaline, creating all of the allure of a club scene but without the great dance beats, which Kesey detailed in his writings. Not surprisingly, Kesey continued the medical trial long after the medical trial ended. Drugs are funny that way.

After Cuckoo garnered success, Kesey moved to a ranch in La Honda, CA, south of San Francisco. There, Kesey and a large gathering of acquaintances and friends dabbled in then-legal psychedelic drugs like LSD (notice a pattern yet?), and held parties dubbed "Acid Tests." The group came to call itself The Merry Pranksters and criss-crossed the country in a bus painted for a bad trip--a trip on acid, not Interstate 95--for no other apparent reason than they could.

There's probably at least three dozen
illegal things going on with this bus.

By 1965, Kesey was arrested for marijuana possession, one of the few illegal drugs at the time. Then he found himself busted a second time for the same crime. For reasons unknown--paranoia? fright? looking for a thrill? a history of bad decision making?--Kesey decided to create a faked suicide to escape pending jail time.

Driving up to northern California, outside Eureka, Kesey parked a truck near a seaside cliff and left an elaborate suicide note with the line "Ocean, Ocean, I'll beat you in the end." Suicide never sounded more poetic or romantic. Then, through the help of his friends and luxurious trunk space to hide, Kesey snuck over the border into Mexico to hide from the FBI for his marijuana arrests.

Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, then Manzanillo all received a visit from Kesey, his friends, his family, and even the bus. The FBI didn't buy the supposed suicide, although the media reported Kesey's death as fact. U.S. authorities tracked the author to Mexico, enrolling the help of the Mexican Federales, but Kesey remained largely hidden, even escaping undercover stings a couple of times. For eight months he hid in plain sight in the town with friends. As the New York Times later recounted, a former hotel owner in Manzanillo, Bart Varelmann, wrote in a memoir that "[t]he interior of Ken's bus was a cornucopia of strange pills, exotic herbs, magic mushrooms, peyote buttons, LSD, uppers, downers, poppers, and of course marijuana." Varelmann also noted that "[o]n a windless day one could get stoned just strolling past the bus." If you think this sounds ideal, clearly you were alive for the 1960s.

Then, as randomly as he faked a suicide, as abruptly as the hijinks began, and as if the vacation was over, Kesey headed back to the United States and accepted five months in jail for his prior arrests. The ruse of a suicide was over.

Can you fake a rebirth? If so, Kesey tried his best version of it. The general absurdity of the previous two years faded as Kesey, out of prison, moved to rural Oregon and wrote largely forgettable material for books and magazines, including a memoir and tour in a new version of the psychedelic bus. He remained largely uninteresting--dare say, normal--until his death in 2001.

The weirdest thing Kesey did at the end of his life was that he became boring. And that was maybe the most criminal thing of all.