— Malcolm HarrisIt’s man against machine, but the novel is politically clueless. Whereas the rebels are alienated white men (and one mute Indian), the proverbial Man is an overbearing nurse, backed up by her black “boy” orderlies. McMurphy’s uprising is about the men reclaiming their masculinity in the face of a castrating state authority.
Replicated under Fair Use from Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris.