Ken Kesey's novel Sometimes a Great Notion still poses important questions about rural life, work

This statue of Kesey is in Portland, Ore.

Even 50 years after it was published, Ken Kesey's book Sometimes a Great Notion still asks important questions about American rural life: "Should we stick together or go our separate ways? And are those the only two options?" Tarence Ray writes for the Daily Yonder. The novel is about the Stampers, a logging family living in Wakonda, Ore., that declines to be part of a strike against a logging company.

The Stamper family motto, "Never give an inch," is compromised when Hank, one of the family leaders, hesitantly hires his quasi-socialist brother Lee to help meet production quotas and stop the strike. The rest of the book details the family's decent into deeper trouble as Hank's preoccupation with the strike costs him almost everything.

"Kesey's objective is to show the value of one inch: At what point does it cost more—environmentally, mentally, physically—to live the life of a the detached yeoman, the rugged libertarian?" Ray writes. Now fewer than 1 percent of Americans attempt to farm as a result of agricultural policies and corporate farming. "Aquifers are drying up; pipelines carve through the earth and its water sources; chemical spills blanket coastlines," Ray notes.

When confronted with a choice between libertarianism and collectivism, Kesey's story raises a third option: death. This can also be viewed as a compromise between rural and urban society. "Can we afford to keep boxing them [rural communities] into impossible choices and false compromises?" Ray writes. (Read more).