 As the nearby river slowly widens and erodes the surrounding land, all the other houses on the river have either been consumed or wrecked by the waters or been rebuilt further from the bank, except the Stamper house, which stands on a precarious peninsula struggling to maintain every inch of land with the help of an arsenal of boards, sandbags, cables, and other miscellaneous items brandished by Henry Stamper in his fight against the encroaching river.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