Last February, when I learned that the Key West Literary Seminar for 2024 was going to have Florida as its theme, I immediately made plans to attend. Two months earlier the editor of The American Scholar had accepted my essay “Florida Man,” which was a defense of the state (for the most part) against the people outside it who continue to make fun of it and the writers inside it who insist on sensationalizing it. Some of the latter were listed as speakers.
I was concerned when the essay didn’t run in the summer issue. Were a massive hurricane to hit South Florida, it would render the essay meaningless. It didn’t make the autumn issue either, still leaving open the possibility of a disqualifying disaster. Finally, it appeared in the winter issue, right after Thanksgiving; the full essay went online at the end of December. I posted about it on social media, and was interviewed about it by Scott Simon on his podcast Open Book.
Last week I walked into the Key West Literary Seminar wondering if people would recognize my name, which was printed clearly on my nametag. No one did. Similarly, no one mentioned the essay in any of the sessions. My Florida Man was the Invisible Man.
