This paper examines the "new journalism" of Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and discusses its roots in the
Beat
movement of the late 1950s, as well as in the Existentialism of post-WWII Europe. Wolfe's writing style changes throughout the book in order to give the reader a sense of the progression from the Beat movement, through the antiwar protests of the mid-'60s, into the psychedelia of San Francisco that launched the Grateful Dead's career.