Caverns is a 1989 novel written collaboratively as an experiment by Ken Kesey and a creative writing class that he taught at the University of Oregon. The cover of the book says it was written by O.U. Levon—the name of this supposed author, spelled backwards, is "novel U.O." (University of Oregon). The full list of authors is: Robert Blucher, Ben Bochner, James Finley, Jeff Forester, Bennett Huffman, Lynn Jeffress, Ken Kesey, Neil Lidstrom, H. Highwater Powers, Jane Sather, Charles Varani, Meredith Wadley, Lidia Yukman and Ken Zimmerman. Background Though still a counterculture icon, by the 1980s Kesey's writing output had slowed significantly. In 1988–89 he agreed to spend a year teaching a creative writing class at the University of Oregon. Kesey decided the best way to teach the course would be for the class of 13 graduate students to actually produce a novel when they assembled, twice a week, at Kesey's home. Lidia Yuknavitch, then known as Lidia Yukman, notes in her memoir The Chronology of Water that she was not actually a graduate student at the time. Kesey laid forth two rules: first, the students could not discuss the plot of the novel with anyone outside of the class; second, for voting purposes Kesey comprised 50 percent of the class, a controlling majority to prevent the class getting "drawn into a lot of democratic discussion", as he told an interviewer. The class soon developed a third rule: there could be no writing outside of class. All work was to be done collaboratively, to help prevent the novel from developing 13 different prose styles. Kesey described his role in the process as quarterback of a football team. The class successfully completed the book, which was published in December 1989. Plot According to Kesey's "Introduction," the novel was inspired by an actual news clipping, an Associated Press story on October 31, 1964 entitled "Charles Oswald Loach, Doctor of Theosophy and discoverer of so-called 'SECRET CAVE OF AMERICAN ANCIENTS,' which stirred archaeological controversy in 1928." The rest of the novel appropriates Loach as its central character. Set in the 1930s, Loach is imagined as a convicted murderer (he killed a photographer to protect the secret of the cave) who is released from San Quentin Prison, in the custody of a priest, to lead an expedition to rediscover the cave. The novel—described by The New York Times as Indiana Jones meets The Canterbury