Derivative One: Kesey-Kline

Defining “running-lines” within a close reading of the opening to Ken Kesey’s SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION:

Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range . . . come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River . . .

Kesey’s opening line is scene setting; a summation.

Come look: is both an invitation and a placement; we are now inside, overlooking the Wakonda Auga River.

   The first little washes flashing like thick rushing winds through sheep sorrel and clover, ghost fern and nettle, sheering, cutting . . . forming branches. Then, through bear- berry and salmonberry, blueberry and blackberry, the branches crashing into creeks, into streams. Finally, in the foothills, through tamarack and sugar pine, shittim bark and silver spruce—and the green and blue mosaic of Doug- las fir—the actual river falls five hundred feet . . . and look: opens out upon the fields.

Kesey builds out the river, forming it line by line for the reader.

By using place-based vocabulary, (ghost-fern, bearberry, silver spruce, douglas fir, etc.,) Kesey denotes the PNW, and writes his fictional river into a reality that western America will recognize with familiarity, and the rest of the world can picture.

Second instance of look:, Kesey is very specific with his placement of the reader throughout the piece, this repeated word pulls the reader out of running-lines and situates the reader’s perspective as one of close-viewer. The colon works to specify action and demands the reader to pay closer attention visually.

   Metallic at first, seen from the highway down through the trees, like an aluminum rainbow, like a slice of alloy moon. Closer, becoming organic, a vast smile of water with bro- ken and rotting pilings jagged along both gums, foam cling- ing to the lips. Closer still, it flattens into a river, flat as a street, cement-gray with a texture of rain. Flat as a rain- textured street even during flood season because of a chan- nel so deep and a bed so smooth: no shallows to set up buckwater rapids, no rocks to rile the surface . . . nothing to indicate movement except the swirling clots of yellow foam skimming seaward with the wind, and the thrusting groves of flooded barn, bent taut and trembling by the pull of silent, dark momentum.

There’s a corrupting here, the river is blending with “human constructs.” (Slice of alloy moon, aluminum rainbow, becoming organic, rotting pilings.)

Kesey also personifies the river: jagged along both gums, foam clinging to the lips.

Grotesque imagery within running-lines double down on corruption of the un/natural: swirling clots of yellow foam skimming seaward with the wind establishes a changed landscape, a place where you won’t find groves of trees, but rather groves of flooded barn.

A river smooth and seeming calm, hiding the cruel file- edge of its current beneath a smooth and calm-seeming surface.

This sentence serves as a refrain, pulling us back to the opening hysterical crashing with cruel file-edge, it also places the initial turbulent image of the river beneath a veneer of beauty and idyllicism, with smooth and calm-seeming surface.

The river’s cruel reality beneath its smooth and calm surface establishes a place of opposing natures.

   The highway follows its northern bank, the ridges follow its southern. No bridges span its first ten miles. And yet, across, on that southern shore, an ancient two-story wood- frame house rests on a structure of tangled steel, of wood and earth and sacks of sand, like a two-story bird with split- shake feathers, sitting fierce in its tangled nest. Look . . .

Short lines are followed by long running-lines describing the Stamper house; the volume of text elevates the importance of the ancient wood-frame house from place to character.

Kesey also pursues further merger of human constructs and the “natural” with: of tangled steel, of wood and earth and like a two-story bird with split-shake feathers.

   Rain drifts about the windows. Rain filters through a haze of yellow smoke issuing from a mossy-stoned chimney into slanting sky. The sky runs gray, the smoke wet-yellow. Behind the house, up in the shaggy hem of mountainside, these colors mix in windy distance, making the hillside itself run a muddy green.

Repetition of rain provides a larger quantity, as well as places the reader first in the interior experiential perspective, and then the exterior.

 

 

   On the naked bank between the yard and humming river’s edge, a pack of hounds pads back and forth, whim- pering with cold and brute frustration, whispering and barking at an object that dangles out of their reach, over the water, twisting and untwisting, swaying stiffly at the end of a line tied to the tip of a large fir pole . . . jutting out of a top-story window.

Kesey relies heavily on “running-lines;” a deft movement of words that pulls the reader along and through a scene without feeling the longness of the sentence. This whole stanza is one line, and one fluid moment.

 

   Twisting and stopping and slowly untwisting in the gust- ing rain, eight or ten feet above the flood’s current, a human arm, tied at the wrist, (just the arm; look) disappearing downward at the frayed shoulder where an invisible dancer performs twisting pirouettes for an enthralled audience (just the arm, turning there, above the water) . . . for the dogs on the bank, for the blinking rain, for the smoke, the house, the trees, and the crowd calling angrily from across the river, “Stammmper! Hey, goddam you anyhow, Hank Stammmmmper!”

This is the last multi-line stanza, and the longest running-line.

Just isolates images, and the parentheses surrounding these image fragments become a magnifying lens.

 

 

   And for anyone else who might care to look.

Kesey begins this stanza with the word And which builds continuation off of the previous imagery, he also separates the two portions with capitalization, line break, and indentation.

And becomes an unorthodox beginning point for a sentence, (one grammatically correct, but infrequent in written “professional” texts,) creating both a bridging effect and a familiar spoken-word cadence.

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To continue this derivative, I have a piece forthcoming in the next issue of Buckman Journal, Gorge, which should drop July 2024. This piece, entitled HAIL COLUMBIA!, relies heavily on running-lines, and follows many of the ideas I've attempted to underscore in this article. I'll be sharing my piece here on maxie.rodeo after Gorge is released, and will continue to update this page as more thoughts surface on SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION. Also look forward to more definition surrounding my use of the word "derivative," as this is a topic of which I am engrossed.

*Update from July, 2024! It's Here! Get your copy of Buckman Journal's, Gorge and read my piece, HAIL COLUMBIA! (Or check the publications tab here on maxie.rodeo, but still buy the book from Buckman for all the other great artists and writers ;D)