Jack Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums” Manuscript Moves to Florida

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  12.01.05 | 1:29 PM ET

Jack Kerouac is most famous for his novel “On the Road,” but imageI’ve always been partial to “The Dharma Bums,” with its train-hoping, Zen-musing, haiku-writing, Sierra-tramping protagonists. I’d put it on my Top 10 Desert Island Novels List any day. So I was happy to see a recent story in the Orlando Sentinel noting that the Kerouac Project of Orlando just acquired the final 197-page draft manuscript of the novel for preservation. Kerouac apparently found inspiration for the book’s ending while star-gazing in Florida.

Interestingly, Kerouac, too, thought “Bums” would be his best novel yet, writing in a letter than he was working on a book “greater than On the Road.”

The Sentinel’s story features this terrific passage about project co-founder Bob Kealing:

An ebullient Kealing had just returned from a trip to Lowell, Mass., where he had wrapped up details of the purchase and had “the best time,” he said, sitting around a kitchen table, listening to Kerouac’s brother-in-law, John Sampas, and other family members swap stories.

When he carried the manuscript back to Orlando on a plane, he balanced it so carefully that a fellow passenger asked him if he had a cheesecake in that box he cradled.

I love that. Apparently Kealing paid $60,000 for the manuscript. That would be one pricey cheesecake.

Related on World Hum:
* Could Jack Kerouac Make It in 2005?
* Kerouac’s “On the Road” Makes Time Magazine’s All-Time 100 Top Novels List
* Casting “On the Road”: Billy Crudup as Dean Moriarty?

Tags: North America, United States, Florida, Literary Travel


4 Comments for Jack Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums” Manuscript Moves to Florida

Bob Kealing 12.01.05 | 11:46 PM ET

Thanks for the article Jim. We’re thrilled to bring home the manuscript Kerouac wrote in Orlando. It represents another step in reclaiming Kerouac’s little-known Florida legacy.

Jim 12.02.05 | 12:24 AM ET

Congrats, Bob. I still can’t get that image out of my head of you flying across the country with the prized manuscript in your lap. I’m glad the pages will reside in a good home.

bob 12.03.05 | 9:36 PM ET

Jim,

Truth be told, it wasn’t in my lap the whole time. I was actually carrying it off the plane when the lady made the cheesecake comment.
We plan to make sure this document is kept in a public place for people to see and scholars to study.

Jim 12.06.05 | 2:24 AM ET

Fair enough, Bob. I hope to check out the manuscript myself one of these days.

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