Sometimes a Great Notion

Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) is American author Ken Kesey’s second novel. The plot revolves around the Stampers, a family of independent loggers who choose to continue working in opposition to a logging union’s dispute with company leadership. The novel uses an experimental structure, switching between first-person and omniscient narrators and telling the story from the perspectives of multiple characters.

Kesey and his counterculture group, the “Merry Pranksters,” were the precursors to the hippies of the late 1960s. He is most famous for his first novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), which was adapted into a classic film of the same title starring Jack Nicholson. Sometimes a Great Notion was also made into a movie, starring Paul Newman. This guide references the Penguin Classics edition (2006).

Plot Summary

Sometimes a Great Notion opens by describing the rainy landscape of the fictional Wakonda Auga River in Oregon. The Stamper family of loggers lives alongside the river. They are fiercely independent and live by the motto of elder Henry Stamper, “NEVER GIVE A INCH!” (35). The logging industry is suffering because lumber corporations are squeezing out smaller, non-union businesses—like that of the Stampers—as well as larger businesses that union loggers work for. The recent invention of the gas-powered chainsaw has lessened logging companies’ need for manual labor. Business is dying, and workers are concerned for their jobs. The union loggers go on strike against the Wakonda Pacific Lumber Company, hoping for shorter hours without a reduction in wages. Union organizers Draeger and Evenwrite want the Stampers to shut down in solidarity with strikers, but the Stampers refuse.

Henry has been injured and is unable to work, so his oldest son Hank asks his estranged half-brother, Leland (Lee), to return from college at Yale to help with the logging operation. Lee’s mother Myra seduced Hank when Lee was 16. Lee saw them having sex through a hole in the wall and blames Hank for the affair. Lee agrees to come back to Oregon, hoping to get revenge on Hank. When Lee arrives, he becomes interested in Hank’s wife, Viv, and decides to sleep with her as retribution. Viv is lonely, and responds to the attention Lee shows her.

Evenwrite and Draeger continue to attempt to convince the Stampers to stop supplying Wakonda Pacific with logs and to join the cause of the union. They offer to buy out the family’s business, and resort to sabotaging the Stampers’ logs when Hank refuses. The Stampers continue their work. One day, the half-recovered Henry is cutting down a tree when part of it falls on him, severing his arm. Another part of the tree pushes Hank’s cousin Joe Ben into the river, pinning him down in the water. Joe Ben drowns. At home, unaware of the tragedy that has occurred, Viv and Lee consummate their affair.

Hank returns home, and sees Viv and Lee through the hole in the wall. He collapses and tells them about the accident, but says nothing about the affair. Hank finally gives into Draeger’s offer to buy out the Stamper business. Lee decides he will go back to Yale after learning that he is the beneficiary of Henry’s life insurance policy. When Lee returns home to retrieve the paperwork, Hank beats him up, but they part in peace. At Hank’s request, Viv sees Lee before he leaves town. She tells Lee that Hank has gone back on his word to Draeger and is going to take the logs to Wakonda Pacific after all. Lee decides to not go back to Yale, but to help Hank instead. Hank attaches Henry’s severed arm to the boat pulling the logs in such a way that the hand gives the middle finger to the townspeople watching him go by.

Viv, however, decides to leave town on a bus, taking a Stamper family photo album with her. Sitting in a bar while waiting for her bus to arrive, Viv runs into Draeger and shows him the album, explaining the complicated nature of the Stamper family. Throughout Sometimes a Great Notion, the novel also describes a wide cast of minor characters who are connected to the Stamper family, their town, and the union struggle.