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In this extended interview with KLCC's Brian Bull, author and counterculture guru Ken Babbs reflects on a life spent challenging conventional norms, traveling America by bus, and his friendship with acclaimed author Ken Kesey.
Merry Pranksters leader Ken Babbs, Ken Kesey’s best friend, is ‘hooked’ on spotlight, adds to psychedelic 1960s myth
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The Merry Pranksters bus, shown here in Portland years after its famous cross-country trip, never failed to draw a crowd.Oregonian
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Ken Babbs is miffed that the big publishers back east don’t seem very interested in his memoir.
“It doesn’t fit into their idea of anything,” he says, on the phone from his 6-acre farm in Lane County. “None of them realize the size of the audience I’m dealing with.”
He might be right about the publishing world’s cluelessness. Sure, Babbs’ 2011 novel “Who Shot the Water Buffalo?” didn’t break any sales records, but that was about the Vietnam War. The unpublished memoir is about the Merry Pranksters.