82
" … as against the Kesey direction, which has become the prevailing life style of Haight-Ashbury … beyond catastrophe … like, picking up on anything that works and moves, every hot wire, every tube, ray, volt, decibel, beam, floodlight and combustion of American flag-flying neon Day-Glo America and winding it up to some mystical extreme carrying to the western-most edge of experience— "
― Tom Wolfe , The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
85
" The hip world, the vast majority of the acid heads, were still playing the eternal charade of the middle-class intellectuals—Behold my wings! Freedom! Flight!—but you don’t actually expect me to jump off that cliff, do you? It is the eternal game in which Clement Attlee, bald as Lenin, lively as a toy tank, yodels blood to the dockworkers of Liverpool—and dies buried in striped pants with a magenta sash across his chest and a coin with the Queen’s likeness upon each eyelid. In their heart of hearts, the heads of Haight-Ashbury could never stretch their fantasy as far out as the Hell’s Angels. Overtly, publicly, they included them in—suddenly, they were the Raw Vital Proles of this thing, the favorite minority, replacing the spades. Privately, the heads remained true to their class, and to its visceral panics … One trouble with this Kesey was, he really meant it. "
― Tom Wolfe , The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
87
" And this one they call Mountain Girl. Every time she sees Dr. George Washington Henry, who is after all one of our most distinguished Negro ministers and thinkers, she yells out, “Watermelon Henry!” —Watermelon Henry? —Yes, it seems she saw him eating a watermelon the other day, and “enjoying it,” as she insists on saying, and so now, every time she sees him, she sings out, “Watermelon Henry!” And you know the kind of voice she has. I suppose that’s “bringing it all out front,” or whatever they call it—but really—Watermelon Henry— "
― Tom Wolfe , The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
92
" So few humans have the hubris to exert their wills upon the flow, maybe not more than forty on the whole planet at any given time. The world is flat, it is supported by forty, or maybe four, men, one at each corner, like the cosmic turtles and elephants in the mythology books, because no one else dares. Mountain Girl is 18 and she is pregnant, but this is Kesey … And Miracles? You haven’t seen miracles yet, Job, until "
― Tom Wolfe , The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test