Kerouac In Florida: Where the Road Ends by Bob Kealing [Book]

Now we can see Jack Kerouac in a context that evokes memories of Florida’s past: sleeping in a moonlit yard with sweet aroma of orange trees all around, straining to hear the velvet whisper of the wind and his brother Gerard in the piney Orlando night, embarking on a sunrise hitchhiking journey along Orange Blossom Trail, returning with his rucksack full of manuscripts and dreams…No one can say Kerouac only came to Florida to die.

– SHADYLANEPRESS.COM

It wasn’t until 2006 that I discovered who the hell this Jack Kerouac character was.  I was 21 years old, naive to a culture that would soon become one of the most fascinating movements in history.  At the behest of a dear friend, I remember picking up a copy of The Dharma Bums and On The Road at a little book store in Rapid City, South Dakota.  I was prepping myself for my first trip to Iraq, and vowed that I would begin reading in the same manner I had years before when I was a lonely high school kid, digesting Tom Wolfe, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald.  And suddenly there were these “beat” characters who I recognized by name, but knew nothing about.  That would soon change.  Before setting off on my own journey, I completed The Dharma Bums.  I was instantly hooked.  Later in an old World War II era barracks in Nowhere, Wisconsin I banged through On The Road.  From then on there really was no stopping me.  Once in the desert, my free time was spent in the mountains of Washington in Desolation Angels, in 1920’s Massachusetts with Visions of Gerard, and so on and so on.  Kerouac’s work grew on me like nothing I had ever experienced before.  Soon, there was Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso, etc.  But, in my one mind, it was always about Jack.  And this was only the beginning.

Jack Kerouac proved to be the model figure for a theory that I have continuously believed to be absolutely true: Some writers were brilliant, but it is their life story that is more fascinating than their work.  This theory works oh so well for so many artists.  Of course, Kerouac’s stories are more or less entirely autobiographical, but it’s not quite the same as it is when reading about him through the hands of those who were around him.  The folks who experienced his eccentricity first hand, and were only more than willing to spill all the juicy details they can about the legendary Mr. Dulouz.  The same can be said for the folks who became so obsessed with this man and his work without even meeting him, that they can literally call themselves scholars of not only Kerouac, but the beat movement that swept the country.  Basically, in the years since first discovering Jack, I have found that it is far more entertaining to read about his benzedrine fueled life than it is to read his benzedrine fueled works.

Bob Kealing may not exactly be one of the aforementioned “Beat Scholars”, but he is indeed a damn fine journalist, and he happen to have the ability to zone in on one aspect of Kerouac’s life that people tend to ignore.  That aspect is more of a place really, and that place is the state of Florida.  Ignorant and ill-advised Kerouac enthusiasts such as myself are under the impression that Florida was simply where Kerouac went to die at the ripe old age of 47.  The only tales I had heard from Florida were meek and saddening.  But one thorough reading of Kealing’s excellent expose Kerouac In Florida: Where the Road Ends will all but squash these thoughts.  Sure it would eventually be the place where his soul descended from his body forever, before having his physical self shipped back to Lowell, Massachusetts, but Florida meant so much more to him.

Kealing writes with such passion for the land in which he also calls home, but not in an overly biased sense.  Through tales of former neighbors, and an obviously great amount of research, Bob manages to document and describe wonderfully every trip, home, and activity Kerouac managed live in or become involved with during his stay all over Northern Cuba.  Right down to his relationship with legendary actor Paul Gleason when he was simply a minor league baseball player who didn’t stand a chance in that line of work.  Apparently Kerouac took him to see Splendor in the Grass one fine day, which lead to Gleason to look up at the actor’s on the screen and say, “Ah, hell I can do that.”  And years later he would be raiding Barry Manilow’s wardrobe and insulting an intolerable Judd Nelson.  This is simply one fascinating tale with the pages of Kerouac In Florida.  There is oh so much more to be discovered, and I certainly hope that you do.

It would be a bit much to throw Kerouac In Florida out there as a “must read” for all Kerouac enthusiasts.  I don’t claim to be a scholar in any way shape or form, but there are books out there that I would consider required reading for anyone looking to indulge themselves into the live of the King of the Beats, which you will soon he down right fucking loathed being called.  Ann Charter’s seminal biography, Kerouac, is a must read.  His former flame Joyce (Glassman) Johnson wrote a very nice book as well as published a plethora of letters of her time with Jack.  And his forgotten daughter, Jan Kerouac, turned out to be almost as talented as her father with her books Trainsong and Baby Driver.  Her story was also brilliantly told, along with others, in Jim Jones’s wonderful book Use My name: Jack Kerouac’s Forgotten Families.  These are just a few of the “must read books” I would recommend to everyone.  That being said, I do recommend Kerouac In Florida to everyone….but, only after you have developed a baseline to truly understand the characters brought up in this wonderful expose.

Kerouac In Florida: Where the Road Ends is without a doubt a book I am very happy to have read.  It is no secret that ole Jack might not have been considered a man worthy of adoration beyond his writing.  But this is subjective in nature to say the least.  The truly great writers out there marched to their own drum, and to put it in modern terms that the younger audiences might understand:  They just didn’t give a fuck.  This is not entirely true, but is at the same time.  Kerouac tended to care too much.  He cared what was happening to his soul, not his liver.  He worried over the welfare of his cats, but maybe not the hidden children he managed to bear.  His relationship with his mother would have baffled Freudian thinkers everywhere.  He was a complex individual who happened to have a great talent in writing, but had a terrible time living.  But, isn’t this comparable to the womanizing of Hemingway, the self-righteousness of Fitzgerald, the tyrannical self-destructive and misogynistic ways of Bukowski, a myriad of classic novels that Stephen King can’t even remember writing, or the fact that old Fyodor only wrote books to support a gambling addiction?  True art rarely comes from a sane mind.  Perhaps this is why the likes of Kerouac will always be honored and respected in so many ways, and Mr. John Grisham will soon be worm food and leave only an expansive trust fund for the little Grishams, but no real worth in the history of American literature.

In conclusion, Kerouac In Florida is a very nice work that details many little known facts about a legendary writer that is both entertaining and enthralling….but, only if you know a thing or two about the man first.  And I guarantee that once you get sucked into the Kerouac world, this is a book that will leave you grinning like an idiot on a bus in the middle of nowhere.  That’s what it did for me, and I hope the same for you..

Grace After Midnight by Felicia “Snoop” Pearson & David Ritz [Book]

While Felicia is a brilliant actor in a truly chilling role, what’s most remarkable about “Snoop” is what she has overcome in her life. Snoop was born a three-pound cross-eyed crack baby in East Baltimore. Those streets are among the toughest in the world, but Snoop was tougher. The runt of the ghetto showed an early aptitude for drug slinging and violence and thrived as a baby gangsta until she landed in Jessup state penitentiary after killing a woman in self-defense. There she rebelled violently against the system, and it was only through the cosmic intervention of her mentor, Uncle Loney, that she turned her life around. A couple of years ago, Snoop was discovered in a nightclub by one of The Wire’s cast members and quickly recruited to be one of television’s most frightening and intriguing villains.

– GOODREADS.COM

Unlike the rest of the world, I didn’t manage to come across a certain HBO show that simply changed the world, right under my ignorant nose.  The Wire went off the air over 6 years ago, but I figured it was never to late to see what all the fuss was about.  And as I mentioned in our previous interview with one of the show’s stars, Michael Kostroff, I was absolutely smitten with this delightful piece of television drama that was gritty as hell, and downright fucking nerve-racking to watch at times.  And no character truly exemplified the gritty realness and instability of the streets of Baltimore like the cold-blooded killer Snoop, who was 1/2 responsible for the couple of dozen bodies that laid slain in the abandon buildings of Baltimore using nothing more than cold ass heart and an expensive nail gun.

But, what if you were to learn that there was indeed some truth behind this fascinating character?  What if there the space between reality and fantasy wasn’t nearly as wide as you originally imagined?  It’s easy to understand that any kind of fictional television or film drama is normally based on some sort of truth.  But, what if the truth was fiction than you could ever imagine possible?  Well, if you can’t, you would do yourself a world of good to check out Felicia “Snoop” Pearson’s memoir, Grace After Midnight.

Now Real Snoop is not a cold-blooded killer who leaves bodies to rot simply because that’s “just the way it is.”  In fact, nowadays, she is about as far from something of that nature as possible.  But, Real Snoop and Fake Snoop were once very similar.  It should be evident enough that David Simon and folks behind The Wire wanted this woman with no previous acting credits, a girl straight from the streets in which they were suppose to be portraying, to not only star as a very important figure in the show, but to even keep not only her own name, but her own identity.  Felicia “Snoop” Pearson is about as close to the overall story of Baltimore that The Wire tended to portray to the world.  In fact, I would find it safe to say that Snoop IS the story of Baltimore.  Albeit a sad and disturbing one at times, but the real story.

Snoop with Michael K. Williams at SXSW 2013

In very natural and stylistic prose, Snoop (with co-author credit going to David Ritz) runs through the series of events as well as some prime examples of what it meant to live and ride in East Baltimore to kick off the book. Her matter-of-factly type prose is somewhat frightening even.  You can watch enough hood movies and episodes of The Wire, but when you hear these stories first hand, and in such a nonchalant fashion, it just might scare the shit out of you.  What is most disturbing is indeed how Snoop can describe events like being 10 years old and shooting a boy in the leg for being a bully with such ease and simplicity that it has that “agh, that was nothing” feel to it.  Or watching another man’s brains getting blown straight out the top of their head, and simply keeping a cold dark stair to the shooter mere feet from you.  If you have never experience such darkness, there is simply no way you could ever understand.  I don’t pretend to, but I am indeed fascinated.

But, with such darkness, there is always a light.  Snoops story of ending up in prison as a teenager is probably world renowned by now.  During an act of self defense, Snoop found herself spending 6 years of her life behind bars.  And it was during her time of incarceration that Snoop truly had to “see the light”, so to speak.  We aren’t talking simply about some sort of God like presence, although if that is what you choose to believe, that might just be it.  All that can be said is that this courageous young woman felt, what she called, “grace after midnight”.  After the death of the man she called Uncle, the man who always had her best intentions at heart and cared for her as family, was gunned down in a drug deal gone bad, Snoop flipped her wig, lost her consciousness and almost lost her own life.  But, something happen.  Some sort of mysterious force came to her in the middle of the night, and she felt a grave change come over her.  A change for the better.

Snoop left incarceration at the age of 20 with a whole new outlook on life.  She was going to work hard and become the best person she knew she could definitely be.  She could be the person that would make Uncle and Mama proud.  And she tried, real fucking hard.  But in a serious turn of events that represents just one example of a serious problem in our country:  we are a nation that tends to say give a big middle finger to the rehabilitated who want nothing more than to change their lives around.  Fat cat asshole employers refuse to higher convicted criminals who have “paid their debt to society” (for whatever the hell that is really worth to these savages) and bust their ass on a car assembly or in a factory moving boxes.  It is the fear of the criminally charged that leads the hopeless ex-con back to the ways that got them thrown in jail in the first place.  And then we complain that our jails are overcrowded.  It is a devilish cycle simple doesn’t seem to have an end in sight, until some assholes open their eyes and decide to be the change that needs to happen.  Stop with this bullshit “trickle down economics” tactics and try some “throw down a bit of respect” to those you employ.  But, I digress……

Snoop soon found her way back on the corner and fighting against the law once again.  But, by a stroke of “luck” or “grace” or whatever it is, she found herself in just the right place at the right time to meet The Wire star Michael K. Williams, who obviously saw something that the show needed, and brought her into the life.  And, as they say, the rest is history.  But, it’s not the ending of the story that matters when you finally finish this powerful memoir.  This is a story of perseverance, struggle, striving, failing, loving, and trying.  Ms. Pearson is a woman who had obstacles thrown at her from the day she was born.  Sometimes these obstacles were brought on by her own accord or by simply ignoring the wonderful people around her who only wanted the best for her.  Other times it was a simple cause and effect structure of living the street life.  And while her story has some true specificity to it, her story is by large far from uncommon.  But in the end, Snoop has won the fight against herself, the fight against her environment, and the fight against the demons that haunt us all.  She left her old ways behind after kicking at so much darkness, that it simply had to bleed light.

To sum this book up in a just a few words, Nothing could exemplify Felicia “Snoop” Pearson better than her one last words in this haunting yet beautiful memoir:

“Where does the light come from?  And what do you call it?.  You can call it God.  You call it Jesus.  These names are good names.  But I call it the miracle of love.  I call it Grace After Midnight.”