In "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", Tom Wolfe, who had traveled with Kesey and his companions on the bus "Furthur", noted that initial reviews of the book varied widely. Commenting in the "Saturday Review" in a 1964 piece entitled "Beatnik in Lumberjack Country", critic Granville Hicks wrote: "In his first novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Ken Kesey demonstrated that he was a forceful, inventive and ambitious writer. All of these qualities are exhibited, in even higher degree, in "Sometimes a Great Notion". Here he has told a fascinating story in a fascinating way." Also in the "Saturday Review", John Barkham wrote: "A novelist of unusual talent and imagination ... a huge, turbulent tale ..." In Wolfe's old paper, the "New York Herald Tribune", Maurice Dolbier wrote: "In the fiction wilderness, this is a towering redwood."