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Michael McLeod
Any Jack Kerouac fans out there?
I have a list of suspects in my head.
Post something, anything, if you are among them.
I am curious - professionally curious - because I am writing a column about the inventor of the beat generation - the guy who, I believe, coined that elusive and overused adjective as applied to a rebellious post-war generation.
Actually I am writing a story about a place where Kerouac lived for a while.
There is a home not far from where I am writing this now - a ten minute drive -- where he wrote "The Dharma Bums," which followed onthe heels of "On The Road," a story about bumming around the country with crazy friends which made him famous. It's an old Florida bungalow that has been turned into a writing retreat: writers can apply to stay there for free and write. They come from all over the world and spend three months on whatever project they have going at the moment.
Weirdly enough, as long as I have lived in Orlando, I have never gotten around to writing about this place, which has been in operation for 20 years. They have asked me to write about it because they need money to fix the place up -- just basic, foundation work, nothing cosmetic, because its ramshackle appearance bespeaks the "beat generation" mentality and lifestyle and writing style that Keroac esposed. It's appropriate, for example, that the seat of a chair that he may have used while he was dreaming up stories has a hole in it. And you can easily visualize him holed up writing in the ranshackle back section of the house where he stayed - it's a low-ceilinged, rectangular add-on with a very low door, like almost Hobbit size, that opens up into a back yard that once had orange trees in it; he would sleep in that backyard some nights, or so the story goes.
There's a splendid Live Oak that hovers over the house - it's a primal touch. If you've ever been around live oaks you'll know what I mean. They are gnarled, ancient, druid-like -- I can imagine him drawing strength from it, coming up with some mystical metaphor, like the time when he was climbing a mountain with friends, one of whom expressed a fear of falling, and Keroac said: "You can't fall off a mountain." When somebody at the house ran that quote past me, I didn't get it at first. Then it came to me that he was saying don't be afraid. Many of the fears you have and the risks you think you see are of your own invention.
Even without the live oak, though, the place is sacred. Sacred, at least, to the writer who stay here and say that they feel a palabable presence, knowing who occupied this space.
Writing this will be a bit difficult for me because he's never been a particular hero of mine, though I know what a cultish, powerful figure he was. A tragic one, alas: he was an alcoholic; he died in his early 40s. You can find interviews with him on facebook with Steve Allen - remember him? -- who played a piano as he interviewed him, and also - this one is much sadder -- with professional pompous ass William F. Buckley. Keroac's head is lolling and he is clearly on something as Buckley asks him if he thinks he influence the frightening and puzzling and bizarre youth subculture that had just emerged at the time - it's hilarious to see how seriously Buckley is as he asks him about - wait for it - HIPPIES! Oh my God what is this country coming to? It's just so weird to think back to a time when being a hippie was the craziest thing you could do and it made mom and pop apolectic.
From the very beginning, when Kerouac fans banded together to set the house as a cross between a sweatshop and a shrine, the irony of a literary landmark in a town better known as a theme park destination did not escape them. And I wondered, personally, if the Beat Generation is forgotten. But truth is that Keroac fans from all over the world -- not necessarily writers, but people who were inspired by the rebelliousness and spiritual or psuedo spiritual pursuit the beat generation espoused, turn up at the house just to look at it.
Ok that's all for now. To be honest with you I wrote this on this space as a sneaky way of penetrating my usual writing block so I have been using you - I mean it's not like I'm using you as test dummies; it's actually just using a space where I can feel free to screw up. More like a dress rehearsal. It eliminates or at least tamps down writers block, the psychology of which I will explain for you from five decades worth of experience with it: It's really hard to get past the fear that I'm going to say something stupid on the page, that I am not smart enough, that everything has to be perfect from the moment it emerges from my fingers. Ironically enough, I think that Kerouac, who did his best to hotwire his brain and write instinctively, without examining the ideas too closely before turning them loose, without having a beady-eyed gatekeeper watching every move he made - I think (haven't done enough research to say this conclusively) that he is perceived by critic to have adopted a writing style designed at least in part to win the war with writing block. The approach he took to make his writing spontaneous, to duplicate experience as it happens as accurately as possible, is what endeared him not only to those who admired his spirit but those who seek to emulate his technique, putting him in a seat not too far removed from hemingway in terms of influencing the style of American writers for generations.
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