When I first created the Book of the Month Club, I only had two rules: No books I’d read before and no classics. Since I started the blog to expand my reading horizons, the first rule was easy enough to follow. The second rule, though, became more difficult to adhere to as time went on. The “classic” literature category is large and, in many ways, fluid as time marches forward. Books are added, subtracted, or otherwise forgotten as tastes change and new work enters the literary tradition. So, instead of trying to quantify what “classic” meant, I settled for a different metric: If the book was taught in high schools, it didn’t belong on the list. 

This may seem like a silly rule since schools and curriculums regularly rotate their materials, but think about it– any book handed out en masse to teenagers across the country has probably been picked apart and studied extensively and often has a movie adaptation to boot. These books, like The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird, have been so disseminated throughout American culture that folks who haven’t read them still know names, major plot points, or themes. It seemed pointless to bother reflecting on such well-known novels, and frankly, I’m not interested in writing a blog post that a high schooler could use for their Advanced Lit essay. 

And then someone recommended One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 

For those unfamiliar with the title, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is author Ken Kesey’s debut novel depicting life in the mental ward of the Oregon State Hospital. Narrated by one of the ward’s long-standing residents, “Chief” Bromden, the novel begins with the arrival of a new patient, Randle McMurphy, who has faked insanity to serve out his prison sentence at the hospital instead of a work farm. Boisterous, rowdy, and incredibly sly, McMurphy establishes himself in the ward quickly and begins to needle at the heavy-handed rule of the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. As McMurphy takes shots at Ratched’s previously unchallenged authority, the battle of wills inspires the other residents on the ward to stand up for themselves, many feeling confident and assured of themselves for the first time in years. Combining a critique of the mental health system with a cutting appraisal of late 50s/early 60s American society, Kesey’s classic novel confronts the effect of individuality in a system that expects and enforces conformity. 

The recommendation for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest sat in my inbox longer than any other title. After all, it broke one of my two rules– Kesey’s novel has been taught (and challenged) in schools since the 1970s, and the 1975 film starring Jack Nicholson had won five Academy Awards, cementing it as both a popular and “classic” movie. To make it worse, I own the movie and have watched it many times. It’s one of my favorites. Not only did I know the plot and the characters, but the conversation around this book and its adaptation has been ongoing for the last sixty years. What on earth could I add to it? After weeks of going back and forth, I decided it would be stupid of me to deprive myself of a book I knew I’d like just to make the subsequent reflection easier to manage. I added it to the list, knowing that my reflection for Cuckoo would have to be a little different. 

The individuality vs. conformity conflict in Cuckoo has been done to death, as has the analysis of how people with severe mental illness are treated both in the public sphere and by healthcare workers. As I said, I’m not here to write anyone’s essay for them. Instead, I’d prefer to reflect on the parts of the novel that I feel have been lost when translated to film, television, and Broadway and how those lost sections are what cement this book as an American classic.

While most modern adaptations of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest feature Randle McMurphy as the protagonist, the novel’s main window into the ward is Chief Bromden. Playing into the staff’s assumptions that he’s deaf and non-verbal, Bromden provides a near-omniscient look into the ward and how it functions, his point of view a careful balancing act between the real world and the hallucinations he experiences. As the novel progresses, McMurphy’s defiance and charm affect the narration, Bromden’s hallucinations diminishing the more confidence McMurphy inspires in him. While the handling of Bromden’s history as a mixed Native American man may be a bit clumsy, his unique (for the ward) childhood experiences and encounters with the U.S. government make him the perfect character to comment on the way society, and the ward, runs around him. By making him a secondary character in adaptations, a lot of the intended messaging about the ward as a microcosm of America gets lost. 

Funnily enough, Kesey’s cross-section of late 50s/early 60s American culture was the main source of criticisms from original book reviewers. Many critics reading the first print of Cuckoo said that, while Kesey was a fine writer, his extrapolations on current public values and systems were lacking and could hardly be considered representative of the time. Meanwhile, some sixty years later, I find the book like peering into the past. The language used to describe the black aids on the ward, while uncomfortable to read, harkens back to the pre-Civil Rights Movement era. The way the Acutes write notes for Nurse Ratched to rat out their fellow ward-mates references the McCarthy years and, as Randle so astutely mentions, is similar to the communist camp where he was a prisoner of war. And war is everywhere in Cuckoo. Nearly every person in the ward, from McMurphy to Bromden, from Nurse Ratched to Sorenson, has served in some military conflict. It is no accident that Kesey stocked the fictional Oregon State Hospital with war veterans who no longer can exist in public spaces without fear or ridicule. While adaptations of the book can feel like “products of their time”, the novel is grounded in that time and provides shrewd criticisms that original reviewers either couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge.

Even with all the extra depth and nuance the novel provides over the adaptations, I still had one hangup– I knew the end. It’s hard to evaluate how to feel about the journey of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when you know most of the plot beats and character interactions. It was still a fun adventure, tracing the highs and lows of the various characters throughout the novel and catching all the foreshadowing I may have otherwise missed, but I couldn’t help but envy readers in the 60s who managed to get their hands on it before it became a literary touchstone. Would I have enjoyed the book more had I gone in blind? Or did knowing the ending help me appreciate the full artistry of the book, catching word choice and allusions I wouldn’t have known to look for on a first read? These aren’t questions I can answer, but nag at me all the same. 

Altogether, even with a spoiled ending, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of the highlights of this year’s Book of the Month Club. Thoroughly engaging, well-written, and with vivid characters that haunt you past the last page, I’d recommend Ken Kesey’s debut novel to everyone and anyone. Though you may think you know Cuckoo, it’s worth the read (and bending a few self-imposed rules) if only to get the full Randle McMurphy, Chief Bromden, and Nurse Ratched experience. Until next month friends, happy reading and happy sipping!