November is the perfect time
to read this book for the fi rst
time, or revisit it again.
The Columbia-Pacifi c region desperately needs a 90-inch rain year, like in 2012.
The prose of Ken Kesey’s “Sometimes a Great Notion” ingeniously and miraculously mimics rainfall.
4 | October 29, 2015 | coastweekend.com
I
The greatest
book on rain:
Ken Kesey’s ‘Sometimes a Great Notion’
In his classic 1964 novel “Sometimes a
Great Notion,” set on the Oregon Coast, Ken
Kesey wrote, “Give me a dark smeary shiny
night full of rain. That’s when the fear starts.
That’s when you sell the juice.”
Having resided at the Oregon Coast for 18
years, I can’t think of a truer sentence written
about rain or living here.
Over some 500 pages, “Sometimes a
Great Notion” unfolds the saga of the stub-
born Stampers, a family gyppo logging out¿ t
in conÀ ict with nature, their community, and
each other. Their family motto is: “Never give
a inch.” (And yes, it’s ungrammatical.)
The novel takes place as October fades into
November. Meaning, right now. The season of
rain.
November is the perfect time to read this
book for the ¿ rst time, or revisit it again, like
so many of us do. I’ve read it four times and
underlined hundreds of passages. I like to
think if thousands of people read “Sometimes
a Great Notion” this month, it might actually
start raining like it’s supposed to around here.
We desperately need a 90-inch rain year, like
2012. It rained all 30 days straight in Novem-
ber in Newport where I lived that year. We
reveled in the juice.
I’m dying for another 90-inch year. The
whole region is.
I consider “Sometimes a Great Notion” the
greatest book on rain in the history of world
literature. Why does it hold the title? Because
the novel rains words in all the eclectic and
unique ways rain falls on the coast — from
staccato to torrent to barely a pulse. The prose
ingeniously and miraculously mimics rainfall.
Why? Because the word “rain” appears six
times in the novel’s ¿ rst page and is used as a
noun, verb and adjective.
Why? Because the word “rain” appears
500, possibly 1,000 times in the novel and ani-
mates everything from Teddy the Bartender to
rivers to the reader.
Why? Because Kesey integrates the Ser-
mon on the Mount with rain’s culpability.
Why? Because Kesey hews a landscape
from the hues of rain, which is, of course, a
physical and literary impossibility. Or it was
until “Sometimes a Great Notion” was pub-
lished and despised by the New York critics
who used umbrellas and thought Gene Kelly
dancing in spurious rain was the apotheosis of
synthesizing rain with art.
Why? Well, read this passage from “Some-
times a Great Notion”:
The Halloween clouds had continued to
roll off the sea all the rumbling night — a
surly multitude, angry at being kept wait-
ing so long, and full of moody determina-
tion to make up for time lost. Pouring out
rain as they went, they had rolled over the
beaches and town and into the farmlands
and low hills, finally piling headlong up
against the wall of the Coastal Range
mountains with a soft, massive inertia. All
night long. A few piled to the mountaintops
and over into the Willamette Valley with
their overloads of rain, but the majority,
the great bulk of that multitude gathered
and blown from the distant stretches of the
sea, came rebounding heavily back into
the other clouds. They exploded above the
town like colliding lakes.
Where are you, surly multitude? Fall and
make me grin. If you do, I’ll give you (and
Kesey) a subtle bow before my ¿ rst rain walk
of the season, and then I’ll sit down and open
“Sometimes a Great Notion” again. There is
always something new there, just like rain.
Matt Love lives in Astoria. He is the author/
editor of 14 books, including “Of Walking in
Rain,” his account of one of the rainiest years in
Oregon history. His books are available through
nestuccaspitpress.com and coastal bookstores.
Coastal Life
Story and photos by MATT LOVE