Off the road

[ arts + culture ]

OFF THE ROAD

On the year of Jack Kerouac’s 100th birthday, Orlando’s Kerouac Project preserves his past while encouraging future voices

BY MATTHEW MOYER

Somewhat at odds with his outsized reputation in American popular culture as a rootless bohemian on the go, Jack Kerouac — Beat Generation icon and writer of On the Road — always returned home after his adventures. Wherever his mother GabrielleAnge Lévesque was, that’s where Kerouac would eventually land. And in 1957, where he landed was an unassuming bungalow in Orlando’s College Park neighborhood.

Jack Kerouac was an Orlando resident for only a short time — less than a year — and spent much of that period holed up indoors, keeping to himself, doted on by his mother, and typing up the manuscript for The Dharma Bums, the novel that would follow On the Road. Once he left, he would never return. But though his time here was brief, Kerouac’s Orlando legacy has been long-lasting thanks to the Kerouac Project. The Project not only preserved the physical house, but turned it into a writers’ retreat.

“I think every generation produces its own influential writers and through the Kerouac Project, and in honor of Jack Kerouac, it is very fulfilling playing a part in nurturing new and upcoming writers,” Kerouac Project president Janna Benge tells Orlando Weekly.

Since 2000, writers have been invited to spend a few months in the House, to hone their craft with time and space to think.

“I had an especially fruitful experience as a Kerouac House resident,” says Nita Noveno, who just finished her stay at 1418 Clouser Ave. “The residency landed in the middle of my yearlong sabbatical from teaching, so I feel extra fortunate to have had this purposeful, designated time and space to work on my book.”

March 12 is the centenary of Kerouac’s birth, but if you want the big retrospective treatment, you’re probably going to have to head up to Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. However, the work that the Kerouac Project is doing here to encourage writers of the now in such a storied creative space is an innovative and ongoing tribute to Jack Kerouac. Much ink has been spilled here, with much more to come.

“For certain this house is imbued with [Kerouac’s] creative energy and that of past residents,” says Noveno. “It was cool and inspiring to live and work in this space.”