The Job of the Writer is to Kiss No Ass
Writing and life advice from author Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey marched to the beat of his own drum
As a college student in California in the early 60's, Kesey earned his pocket money by participating in government-run experiments that tested the effects of drugs like mescaline and LSD. Then he turned around and used those experiences to write the ground-breaking novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
For some people that might be enough: literary fame, fortune and notoriety. You did it, man! You’re the next great American novelist! But Kesey was just getting started.
From his farm in the hills south of San Fransisco, Kesey began hosting the wild events that would later be known as the “Acid Tests.” The Grateful Dead, Neal Cassady, the Furthur Bus and the Merry Pranksters… Kesey wound up surfing the edge of a nation-changing wave. Hunter S. Thompson and the Hell’s Angels got involved. Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, too. The Hippie Revolution was underway, and Kesey was no small player.
He was also no Emily Dickinson, writing from a high window using only the power of his imagination. His life was so interesting that other people wrote books about him. Most notably, Tom Wolf’s The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test.
You might expect a guy like that to flame out like one of Kerouac’s fabulous yellow roman candles. Instead, Kesey moved to a farm in rural Oregon and lived out the rest of his days as a relatively (for him) quiet and peaceful family man. He continued to teach, write and publish until his death in 2001.
The job of the writer
In the novel Sometimes a Great Notion, Kesey left us writers with this gem of a quote:
The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.
It’s a simple quote, yet powerful. Versatile like the Golden Rule. In this article, I want to explore a few things that Kesey’s life, and this quote in particular, mean to me.
A writer should aim for the truth with a deadly hunter’s calm
Not the literal truth, not necessarily. As a novelist, Kesey understood that some truths are better told through fictional stories than facts.
The truth for a writer is more like, “the truth in your heart that is also universally true for all people.”
So often, we parrot the words and phrases that we think are popular. We cater to likes, comments and claps. We imagine what our grandmother might think if she ever read our words, which causes us to trim, to omit, to sand the sharp edges off of our truth.
Every writer is guilty of this crime to varying degrees. Some truths are shiny and delightful to share, but other truths are dirty and inconvenient. We know that sharing these kinds of truths will cost us judgment from our peers.
Quick question: did you squirm a little bit during that Kesey quote when he said “no matter how holy and white”? I wouldn’t have chosen those two words, if it were me.
As writers we want to inspire. We don’t want to offend and we don’t want to be misunderstood. But the reality is so ironic it’ll make you weep:
Every time we censor our words or twist them into compliance, we effectively hammer another nail into the coffin of our own mediocrity. A voice without edge is a harmless voice, a background sound, white noise.
Nobody gets offended by white noise because nobody cares.
If you find yourself preaching, cut that s*** out
I’ll never forget how gross I felt after seeing the movie Flight with Denzel Washington in 2012. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the movie. I love Denzel. (Who doesn’t?) In the movie he crash-lands a commercial airliner by flying it UPSIDE-DOWN. Hell yes.
The problem was the ending. Denzel’s character is a pilot who struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. He has a chance to win his court case but flubs the whole thing by getting drunk. He goes to prison. In prison he joins Alcholics Anonymous. The whole last part of the movie is a reformed and sober Denzel, preaching to his inmates about the dangers of alcoholism.
Now don’t get me wrong. AA is important. Their mission is noble and helpful. But I felt hoodwinked by that movie! Tricked! Bamboozled!
I thought my favorite celebrity was posting on instagram to share his/her honest feelings. Come to find out they were selling me yoga pants the whole time!
Remember that “spoken word” stuff? Open mics and slam poetry? You know why it feels gross to listen to those guys? It’s because they’re preaching. They’re only partially interested in the truth of what they’re saying. What they’re really interested in is the outcome.
Writers are not evangelists. Nor are they salesmen. Writers are truth tellers, journalists of the heart. We tell it like it is to the best of our ability.
Which leads me to my next point…
Nobody cares about your advice
Ken Kesey didn’t write an essay in the newspaper about the power dynamics and the systematic corruption of psychiatric hospitals. He wrote a novel called One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The novel was “about” real people, people that Kesey actually got to know during his participation in those government experiments. I have to believe that he did affect a lot of good change on the system, but he didn’t do it by standing on a soapbox and spouting advice. He was less like Billy Graham, more like Edward Snowden.
“I’m not interested in what people should do, I’m only interested in what people are actually doing.” I think William S. Burroughs said that.
There’s a certain type of article that Medium readers love. It’s the “How I made $65,000 in 6 weeks by doing x,y, and z, and wearing nothing but my underwear.” These articles crop up everyday. I can’t help but click on them. My house will be on fire and I’ll still click.
These articles are sexy for the precise reason that they don’t offer advice. What they offer is real facts, real dates, real stories. Cold, hard numbers baby, that’s what I want. Give me those cold, hard numbers.
Life experience is the only worthwhile form of advice.
If I’m 16 years old, I instantly fall asleep when my Dad says, “You know son, you shouldn’t drink alcohol. It impairs your judgement and it’s harmful for your liver…”
But when Dad says, “One time in college my girlfriend broke up with me. I got real drunk and I thought I could drive to Taco Bell…”
Now I’m listening.
Write what is, not what isn’t
Here’s one small but earth-shattering trick that Kesey used in his quote. Let’s look at that first line again: “The job of the writer is to kiss no ass.”
There’s a well-known piece of writing advice which goes something like this: never explain a thing by focusing on the absence of a thing.
For example, instead of saying, “no clouds were in the sky that morning,” try saying, “the sky was cloudless,” or better yet, “the sky was a blanket of neon blue.”
Instead of saying, “Her face is expressionless,” try giving readers an image, something they can sink their teeth into. Don’t say what something isn’t. Say what it is. “Her face is a blank canvas,” or “Her face is a wooden mask” are concrete images that the reader can touch and feel.
If it were me, I might have tried to say Kesey’s quote like this: “The job of the writer is to not kiss any ass.”
Harmless enough, but do you feel how much weaker my version is? There’s no kissing in my version. There’s no action at all! Kesey’s version, on the other hand, is active. The writer is kissing.
“The writer should not kiss any ass?” Weak.
“The writer should avoid kissing asses of all types?” Even weaker.
“The writer should kiss no ass.” Now that’s a memorable quote. That’s a writer with glass and gravel in his voice.
You are never alone when you write
I like to imagine that a guardian angel stands over my shoulder when I write. She looks something like the angel in the photo at the top of this article. (I know it’s cliche. Maybe your angel is something more interesting like a mythical beast.) But my angel stands with a horn in one hand and a sword in the other. She’s always watching and always judging, and she only judges on one scale: Truth with a capital “T.”
Once I made the mistake of confusing her with the Muse. My coffee was cold and my back hurt and I needed some inspiration.
“What do I look like?” she barked, “a swooning mermaid in a blue lagoon? Quit whining and just tell the truth.”
She didn’t really say that because she doesn’t talk, but that’s what I heard when I looked straight into her stoney grey eyes.
“Be like Ken Kesey,” she said, “Don’t just peer in through the windows; check yourself into the hospital. Don’t just gossip about the party, host the damn thing at your place. Don’t sit around waiting for the bus to pick you up; fix up your own adventure-mobile and draw an X on the map and go. Look around as you drive. Open yourself up. And in the end, tell it to the world exactly how you saw it.”
