Jack Kerouac is the most famous of the Beat Generation novelists. The author of On the Road and Dharma Bums, Kerouac lived in Orlando and later in St. Petersburg where he died in 1969. The Kerouac House is located in the College Park area of Orlando and was largely forgotten until reporter Bob Kealing came across the house in 1996 and wrote a book entitled Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends. Kealing was also one of the founders of the Kerouac Project which bought the house and created a writer in residence program there. The house has since been declared a historic site and is the sole literary landmark in Orlando.Watch the You Tube video posted here.
Kerouac did not actually own the house, but he rented rooms in the back of the house and lived there with his mother during part of 1957 and 1958. I was lucky enough to see the inside of the house while I was there and we were able to take several photographs (all photos by Sue Minassian) of the interior and exterior. The Kerouac Project now owns the house and sponsors a writers in residence program. Check out their web site at:
http://www.kerouacproject.org/
The poem I read in the podcast was published in the Spring 2007 issue (Vol. 4, No. 1) of The Dos Passos Review.
You can visit their web site at:
http://www.longwood.edu/dospassosreview/
While searching for images of Jack Kerouac, I came across this photograph of Bob Dylan and the poet Allen Ginsberg visiting Kerouac's grave in Lowell, Massachusetts:
For more information about the Beat Generation Writers and Poets visit:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/BeatGen.html
http://www.kerouac.com/
http://www.wordsareimportant.com/dharmabeat.htm
Here are some more photos of the exterior and interior of the house:
All photos by Sue Minassian (2007).
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