Ken Kesey writes the novel "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" while working as a night shift watchman for a psychiatric clinic for veterans and under the influence of LSD as he was previously participating in voluntary drug tests held and financed by the government. He and a group of friends would buy a 25-year old school bus for the price of $ 1500, paint it in bright colours, name it "Further" and start travelling around the US and giving out drugs to anyone who wanted to try. As if the leading character in the novel - Randle Patrick McMurphy, comes off this same school bus of the "Merry Pranksters", by which they became known, to turn into one of the brightest representatives of the so-called counterculture. In his books Kesey will often present a large scale model of the society through a particular case he describes. His second novel "Sometimes a Great Notion" comments on conflict between western individualism and eastern intellectualism taking place in the US. After an artistic setback, including doing some prison time for marijuana possession, he published his third novel "Sailor song". Kesey also resorts to "local nationalism" as he usually sets the action in his novels in the places where he spent his childhood years - a fact that explains why some critics compare him to William Faulkner.