Sometimes a Great Notion is Ken Kesey's second novel, published in 1964. Although One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is more famous, many critics consider Sometimes a Great Notion his magnum opus. The story revolves around an Oregon logging family that continues to cut trees despite a union strike.
The story centers on the Stamper family, a hard-headed logging clan in the fictional town of Wakonda, Oregon. The union loggers in the town of Wakonda go...
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Sometimes a Great Notion is Ken Kesey's second novel, published in 1964. Although One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is more famous, many critics consider Sometimes a Great Notion his magnum opus. The story revolves around an Oregon logging family that continues to cut trees despite a union strike.
The story centers on the Stamper family, a hard-headed logging clan in the fictional town of Wakonda, Oregon. The union loggers in the town of Wakonda go on strike in demand of the same pay for shorter hours, in response to the decreasing need for labor due to the introduction of the chainsaw. However, the Stamper family, which owns its own non-union family company, decides not only to keep working but also to supply the regional mill with all the lumber the town would have supplied had it not been on strike. This decision, and the surrounding details of the decision, are deeply explored in this multilayered historical background and relationship study – especially in its examination of the...
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