Customer Reviews

Kerouac In Florida: Where The Road Ends

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Bob Kealing's "Jack Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends" is an oasis of fresh water for those who thirst for the radiance of the beat generation. Kealing's investigation not only tackles controversial issues surrounding Kerouac's life but also uncovers fresh chronicles and knowledge. Furthermore, Kealing's work provides real life personalities to a number of Kerouac's long time friends and family. Most of whom, Kerouac wrote about in "On The Road" and other beat novels. I also found Kealing's narrative of Kerouac's adventures in Florida captivating. Simply but, it's an adventurous biography about the original adventurer.

When I first heard about this book it blew my mind. Having grown up in Orlando I often struggled with it's lack of culture (besides Zora Neale Hurston). Who would have thought that driving around town as a teenager (probably with a worn copy of "On the Road" in my car) I was driving by two houses where Jack Kerouac wrote "The Dharma Bums" and "Big Sur." Bob Kealing has uncovered this gem of literary history in an eloquent elegy for not only Jack Kerouac, but his sister "Nin."

Some say "you can't go home again," but it looks like sometimes you can. I was so moved by this great little book that I optioned the film rights a bit over a year ago and am proud to say that with Bob's talent, faith and passoin, will be bringing this great untold story to the screen.

Everyone knows of Kerouac's famous road trips, hitchhiking or riding the rails. And Lowell, Mass. is famous as his hometown. But few think of Kerouac's time spent in Florida, which was actually where he found fame on the publishing of On the Road and where he wrote, among others, the stellar Dharma Bums.

Kealing depicts Kerouac's life in Florida in a starkly honest way, sprinkling interviews with neighbors and friends along with the story of the last 10 years of Kerouac's life. You get a sense of Kerouac's mad love of nature and his family as well as the depression that drove him to drink himself to death. It's a very moving account of the life of an often-misunderstood literary genius.

Bob Kealing's Kerouac In Florida is a major contribution to not only the cultural heritage of central Florida but to Kerouac's biography as well. Though he spent years in Florida, these periods of Kerouac's life have been lucky to get a paragraph in most biographies. After years of research, Kealing has finally told the story of Kerouac's lost years. The book is rich with personal recollections from people who knew Kerouac in Florida and information on current efforts to establish and preserve Kerouac's place in the history of central Florida. A must-read for anyone interested in Kerouac the author and Kerouac the man.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the life and death of Jack Kerouac. I very much liked the no nonsense approach of reporting on the tragically screwed up life of an American legend without getting all sappy about how he was "such a misunderstood genius" of which there are dozens of treatments. But I was also surprised how much of Kerouac's life was tied up with Florida. I liked "meeting" the people in Jack's life that heretofore have been overlooked or ignored. My favorite part of the book was the discovery and transformation of the Kerouac house into a "writer-in-residence." Specifically, the gathering where Steve Allen and David Amram mused about their many meetings with Jack Kerouac. The picures included throughout the book were great too.

Lastly, there is a rather crass saying that Florida is where people go to die -- it seems that Jack was ahead of the times on this as well.

Bob Kealing has done what many of us thought could NEVER be done, he has found the lost road of Jack Kerouac's life in Florida. Although most of us only know Florida as the place where Jack passed on, Mr. Kealing has spent countless hours, days and years to unveil the years Jack spent in Florida. Once I started this book I could Not put it down until I had devoured it (which was in one sitting). All the hopes I had for this book were fulfilled in just the first chapter and I recommend it HIGHLY to ANYONE who is a true (and pure) Kerouac fan. This IS the book that should be juxtaposed to Ann Charters "Kerouac" and Gerald Nicosia's "Memory babe".

I highly recommend 'Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road
Ends'. This book brings to light details of a critical time in
Jack Kerouac's writing career and personal life. The reader
comes along on Bob Kealing's expertly researched and
documented investigation into Kerouac's Florida
connections, and his life in the Sunshine state. Kerouac
himself never wrote extensively of these times in Florida
as he did of many other parts of his 'Legend of Dulouz',
his own life story. We see Kerouac on the verge of fame,
and then see him as he comes out of the other end of the
tunnel after the publication of 'On the Road'. We see his
struggle to come to terms with his public persona, his
struggles with his own family and the sad end of the road.
This book is a great read, each chapter revealing more
and more detail of the artist who has gathered so much
attention, positive and negative, over the last 50 years.

Drawing on well documented interviews with neighbors,
friends, drinking buddies and aquaintances of Kerouac, as
well as Kerouac's own writings and letters, 'Kerouac in
Florida' paints a portrait of the 'King of the Beat
Generation' that has not been seen before. By visiting
where he lived in Florida we get a sense of how he lived.
First hand accounts of people who knew him on a day to
day basis provide some of the most telling details of
Kerouac's lifestyle and comportment. It is not what you
may think.

Bob Kealing's work on this book was also instrumental in
establishing the house where Kerouac banged out his
follow up to 'On the Road', 'The Dharma Bums', as a
historically significant landmark. This house in the College
Park section of Orlando, Florida is now home to The
Kerouac Project, a house where writers in residenence are
provided the opportunity to create.

This book includes never before published photographs of
Jack Kerouac that show the man at work in his Florida tin
roofed back porch apartment, creating in his own unique
manner. I could not put this book down.

Jack Kerouac's times in Florida were never well documented. New York and San Francisco yes, Mexico yes, even Northport yes. The houses where Kerouac sweated over his novels in Florida were almost dismissed. Author Bob Kealing has redressed that imbalance with this investigative book on Kerouac's 'forgotten' life in Walt Disney's paradise. The photographs that Kealing has presented here are worth the admission price alone. Neighbours are discovered who provide valuable background about his often secretive life in this state, a portrait is drawn of an often solitary man who had enjoyed notoriety as an iconic writer but who was desperate to be recognised as a writer of literary merit and one who would be given critical applause. Kealing captures the stultifying heat, the pounding of Kerouac's typewriter keys during the hot nights, the trips to the bars with local friends. Essential for any Kerouac observer.

Kevin Ring (editor of Beat Scene magazine in England www.beatscene.net)

Been a Kerouac fan for some years now, haphazardly introduced by a religious studies teacher. Kerouac's burning for life was a religion I could dig.

Now, some years later, being a resident of Orlando, I was given this book. It opened my eyes to this city being even deeper than I had thought. Before hordes came for salvation at Dizney World there was a swampy suburbia, where Kerouac sought his own paradise.

Kealing provides some great memories from those touched by Kerouac's life in Orlando. And Kealing's narrative succeeds in taking us back to the time when a sweating madman hammered out some of his most famous works.

We also get a picture of Kerouac the troubled son and brother, racing about the country to meet the demands of his art and more often, his mother.

I suggest any fan of Kerouac pick up this book. It is a fun and fluid read. If you are a Kerouac fan who has lived in Florida, then you must see the sunny side of a writer known for his citybeats.

Although the book has major shortcomings--foremost a real stretch to actually form a book and not a lengthy article--Kerouac's time in Florida is finally revealed. A sad tortuous hell of an existence in the state--just what the reader expects.