Bob Kealing
It seems that most Kerouac biographies that I’ve read gloss over his life in Florida. The conventional wisdom seems to be “went to Florida, lived with his domineering mother, drank himself to death”. ”Kerouac In Florida” shines a light on those years. It shows that Kerouac, who lived in Florida much of the time between 1956 (“On The Road” was published in ’57) and his death in 1969 and his mother needed each other. Kerouac had a life in Florida, and it was his Florida friends, not the Beats, that watched his sad decline.
Judging this book by its cover, I thought it was a local, superficial book, but was pleased to discover that Kealing did original research, based his story on extensive interviews, and visited and described various Kerouac residences in Orlando and St. Petersburg. Kealing has contributed new material to all that has been written about a much written-about subject.
The book includes an interesting – though poorly reproduced – photo section. It includes photos taken by “Time” photographer Fred DeWitt of Kerouac at work, hands blurred as he types as well as an interesting photo of Kerouac copying a scroll manuscript to letter-sized paper working from a scroll in a device propped next to hist typewriter that looks like a towel roller on a board .
( The house where “Dharma Bums” written is now a writers’ residence where writers can stay and work of for three month terms.