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Warning: there's virtually nothing about Ken Kesey in there. Also, her broad characterization of misfits as misunderstood creative geniuses is not only unfounde

Warning: there's virtually nothing about Ken Kesey in there. Also, her broad characterization of misfits as misunderstood creative geniuses is not only unfounded and probably inaccurate, it is repugnant to the entire ideal of the misfit that she herself is trying to cultivate; people that resist being categorized and sorted.

hyperpallium 9y ago
All misfits are alike; each is ill-fitting in its own way.
osullivj 9y ago
I recommend Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid Acid Test if you're curious about Kesey.
- indescions_2017 9y ago
  Sometimes a Great Notion, Kesey's autobiographical novel about a prodigal "hippie" son returning to his Pacific Northwest logging family and joining an internecine skirmish against corporate raiders is also psychologically revealing ;)
throwanem 9y ago
I don't think that's a fair reading. What I took from the piece is not that misfittedness is a kind of martyrdom, but rather that it has value for more than just those who experience it; to cast the thing in a political metaphor, misfits drag the Overton window in the direction of weirdness, and in so doing make space that wouldn't otherwise exist for the lower-amplitude, but still meaningful and worthy, weirdness that's part of everyone, even the mythical "normal people". Such spaces in turn make it possible for not only those who create them but also "normal people" to live a richer life than would otherwise be possible; not only do those who are on intimate and ineluctable terms with weirdness have a place to be, but those who could take weirdness or leave it - but are likely to be all around happier and more satisfied with life if they take it - have a place where an option exists of safely doing so. Sometimes that's a physical place you can go to, if you have the means; sometimes you find it described in a story or some other work of fiction, and even though it's only your mind that can travel there, it might still do you the quietly invaluable service of creating a safe home for the secret parts of yourself that can find no expression, perhaps aren't even suffered to exist, in the world where your body lives and where the majority of your experience thus necessarily resides.

hyperpallium 9y ago

All misfits are alike; each is ill-fitting in its own way.

osullivj 9y ago

I recommend Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid Acid Test if you're curious about Kesey.

indescions_2017 9y ago
Sometimes a Great Notion, Kesey's autobiographical novel about a prodigal "hippie" son returning to his Pacific Northwest logging family and joining an internecine skirmish against corporate raiders is also psychologically revealing ;)

throwanem 9y ago

I don't think that's a fair reading. What I took from the piece is not that misfittedness is a kind of martyrdom, but rather that it has value for more than just those who experience it; to cast the thing in a political metaphor, misfits drag the Overton window in the direction of weirdness, and in so doing make space that wouldn't otherwise exist for the lower-amplitude, but still meaningful and worthy, weirdness that's part of everyone, even the mythical "normal people". Such spaces in turn make it possible for not only those who create them but also "normal people" to live a richer life than would otherwise be possible; not only do those who are on intimate and ineluctable terms with weirdness have a place to be, but those who could take weirdness or leave it - but are likely to be all around happier and more satisfied with life if they take it - have a place where an option exists of safely doing so. Sometimes that's a physical place you can go to, if you have the means; sometimes you find it described in a story or some other work of fiction, and even though it's only your mind that can travel there, it might still do you the quietly invaluable service of creating a safe home for the secret parts of yourself that can find no expression, perhaps aren't even suffered to exist, in the world where your body lives and where the majority of your experience thus necessarily resides.