Ken Kesey's One flew over the cuckoo's nest

About 10 years, I first discovered John Taylor Gatto -- via his thin book "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" (10th Anniversary 2nd Edition, in 2005) And, buried in that book's "Introduction to the 2nd Edition" (written by David Albert) -- I still recall David Albert's brief review of this Monarch Notes "Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" by John Taylor Gatto. (To see David Albert's "Introduction" -- [use this "Look Inside" link][1] ) So, here's that pertinent review, by David Albert, in 2005... "This Monarch Notes guide – the only book of Gatto's likely to be read by students undergoing their slow death in what passes for "educational institutions" these days – is an incendiary work. And not only because of its black-and-red cover.... I doubt that a set of Monarch Notes has ever been heaped with literary praise before, but Gatto’s is much deserving. His description of the Keseyan institutional world contained in this incendiary set of crib notes (he even quotes Che Guevara: “Educate your enemy, don't kill him, for he is worth more to you alive than dead”) is as compelling as the novel itself. He describes the Combine that controls this little world as “an all-powerful, earth-girdling, brain-destroying association of technocrats ... intent on building a world of precision, efficiency, and tidiness .. a place where the schedule is unbreakable.” “In such a world," he writes, “there is neither grief nor happiness; nobody dies – they only burn out and are recycled; actually, it is a rather safe place, everything is planned – there are neither risks nor surprises.” Gatto argues that within this world, “words and meaningless routines insulate people from life itself, blind them to what is happening around them, and deaden the moral faculties.” The defense to this charge – ironic, of course, as he notes – is that the Big Nurse delivers charity baskets to the poor. Pivotal to Kesey’s novel, according to Gatto, "is the cataclysmic revelation that the inmates of the asylum are not committed but are there of their own free will.” And the way they are controlled, ultimately, is through guilt, shame, fear, and belittlement. Double hmmm. And now, telescoping the next 25 years of his career, Gatto tells us the way out. “The way out of the asylum," he writes, “is literally to throw out the control panel, on a physical level smashing the reinforced windows, on a symbolic spiritual level becoming independent of rules, orders, and other

שנה

1975

שפה

English

סדרה

Monarch notes -- 00966

הוצאה

Monarch Press

מהדורות

4

עמודים

103

ISBN

9780671009663

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata