Bern Keating  1915-2004
Major Works
- Pick of the Crop II
- The Inside Passage
- The Flamboyant Mr. Colt and
His Deadly Six-Shooter
1976
- Famous American Cowboys
- An Illustrated History of the
Texas Rangers
- Chopper!: The Illustrated
Story of Helicopters in Action
1976
- Florida
- Famous American Explorers 1972
- The Gulf of Mexico
- Alaska
- Mighty Mississippi 1971
- Mississippi 1982
- Steamboatin' Log: A Mile
by Mile Steamboat Journey Up the Mississippi River from Cairo,
Illinois to Minneapolis, Minnesota/Upper Mississippi River
- Steamboatin' Log: A Mile
by Mile Steamboat Journey Up the Mississippi River from New
Orleans, Louisiana to Cairo, Illnois/Lower Mississippi River
- Steamboatin' Log: A Mile
by Mile Steamboat Journey Up the Ohio River from Cairo, IL
to Pittsburgh, PA/The Cumberland River from Paducah, KY to
Nashville
- Bohemia
- Inside Passage
- The Legend of the Delta Queen
1986
- American Heritage's Illustrated
History of the Civil War
- The Horse That Won the Civil
War
- The Invaders of Rome
- Life and Death of the Aztec
Nation
- The Mosquito Fleet
- Zebulon Pike: Young America's
Frontier Scout
- Grand Banks 1968
(Photographer Dan Guravich)
- The Northwest Passage
from the Mathew to the Manhattan 1497 - 1969
1970
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Biography of Bern Keating
By Jeremy Jinkerson (SHS)
Bern Keating, 1915-2004
Leo Bernard "Bern" Keating,
Greenville writer/photographer was born on May 14, 1915 in Fassett,
Quebec, Canada ("Keating," Personal Interview). He was
born to Laure Lalonde Keating and John Julian, and his birth
name was Leo Bernard Keating. His father was an engineer
who worked on heavy construction. For this reason, Keating
and his mother traveled wherever his father's work took them
(Atdena 277). He moved to America as a child, and
Keating went to school in Chicago, Cattaraugus, New York, and
New York City. After this, he became a merchant marine
deck hand, which he claims to be an obligation of a prospective
writer ("Keating," Personal Interview).
After
this, Keating went to Washington Square College of New York
University. He then took a year off to rivet airplanes
("Keating," Personal Interview). In 1938, he received his B.A.
from the University of Arkansas. While there, Keating admits to
having consistently written other people's term papers for money.
He says that he was blackmailed by Phi Beta Kappa for this
means of livelihood. While writing others' term papers, Keating
gained an ability to research topics and write very quickly (Atdena
278).
Keating was the city editor of the Palm
Beach Post-Times in 1939. On June 10, 1939,
he married Marian Frances West. They have two children:
John Geoffrey and Kate Maulding. Keating then served as
the news director of WIBX, a radio station in Utica, New York
(Atdena 278). For four years during World War II, Keating
served in the Navy. He was a communications officer for
destroyers. After this, he was an attack officer of a
Pacific task force. This particular force sank six Japanese
submarines in nine days ("Keating, Personal Interview.)
However, there is some discrepancy as Atdena says that it was
five submarines (278).
Keating then moved to Greenville, Mississippi
(Cox 417). There he opened his own photography
studio. He did local projects until Quentin Reynolds helped
him to become a world photographer. Reynolds used Keating's
services and showed his work to editors in New York where he
proclaimed, "Look what some redneck from Mississippi can do."
As a result, major publications were soon requesting Keating's
photographs. As editors put captions underneath his work,
Keating began to consider writing. Keating made the switch
and has managed to receive respectable reviews and sales (Atdena
278). This is what Keating had always wanted to do anyway.
Keating
has won many awards including a Pulitzer (Keating). He received
the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters' Lifetime Achievement
Award, an award that had previously only been given to Walker Percy and
Eudora Welty (Starkville Daily News 23 Feb. 1997: 4F). He has received awards including the West Heritage Foundation Award for Famous American Explorers and the National Graphic Arts Award for Florida. (Atdena 278). Also, Keating has contributed regularly to the following publications: Smithsonian,
Travel and Leisure, Town and Country, Look, Life, Holiday, National
Geographic, Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, The New York,
Viking Doubleday, Putnams, and Playboy (Keating Mississippi n. page).
Keating has traveled to 105 countries
and is fluent in both Spanish and French ("Keating," Personal
Interview). Keating has several books written under pseudonyms.
Most of his work is now commissioned. Generally, Keating's
work falls into the categories of travel, history, biography
or any combination of these three. Keating is a very avid
traveler and is always on the move. He that he uses the
same style when he is writing for children and for adults.
He does not vary in sentence structure or vocabulary.
He has made several attempts at fiction but is not proud of
them. Keating says that living in Mississippi has had
"absolutely" no influence on his writing style. Keating
claims to love the soft Delta women. His favorite book
that he wrote is The Horse That Won the Civil War.
He has written a wide variety of books, many of them in collaboration
with his wife, photographer Franke Keating.
NOTE: Bern Keating
lived in Greenville, Mississippi, and was working on his memoirs
when he died March 8, 2004.
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A Review
of Mississippi
by Jeremy Jinkerson (SHS)
Mississippi
is a nonfiction book written by Bern Keating with his wife Franke
Keating's photography that recalls a few events that occurred in the
state of Mississippi. It also speaks a great deal about the
people who live in Mississippi and the places you find in Mississippi. Mississippi
is a slow-moving book that requires a lot of patience on the part of
the reader. However, it is filled with a wide assortment of very
interesting facts that nearly any Mississippian would find
interesting. Also, the artwork by Franke Keating, Bern Keating's
wife, is amazing and well worth the price of the book without any
words.
Mississippi begins with Bern
Keating giving his own introduction. A large section of the
introduction is about a conversation he had with a woman who was
making derogatory comments about Mississippi. At this point, Mr.
Keating begins dropping famous names of people who have been to
Mississippi and people who live in Mississippi. I enjoyed this
introduction because it allows the reader to see that he truly enjoys
Mississippi.
Keating has a very interesting style
of writing. After his fantastic introduction, he has one chapter
that is primarily devoted to the landscape of the state. In the
next chapter, he expands on the landscape and begins talking about the
Mississippi River and the upstream voyage of the steamboat New Orleans.
After this, he devotes a whole chapter to the Mississippian literary
legend William Faulkner. Keating then seamlessly moves back into
a discussion of the landscape and then the Gulf Coast. After
that, Keating begins talking about the Natchez Trace, then Jackson, and
then the Delta. Finally, the last chapter resembles the
introduction in that Keating tells how much he loves Mississippi.
The last chapter finishes the book in much the same way as the
introduction began it, which promotes unity throughout.
I
did not expect to like this book, but, in fact, I enjoyed it. The
facts that Keating presents are not the kind that you would find in a
typical textbook. The book spends more time talking about the
culture of Mississippi than the events that occurred in its
history. Keating pays attention to every little detail in the
scenes he describes. Also, I particularly enjoyed the chapter
about William Faulkner. Keating obviously respects him
tremendously because he calls him America's foremost writer. As a
reader of Faulkner's works, I understand why Keating respects him so
much.
I must say that the one thing that I like the most about Mississippi
is not the written words. I love all the pictures taken by the
author's wife, Franke Keating. Every one is amazing. I
especially like the pictures of the hunter with a duck call in his
mouth (14), the picture of the youth girl in a Mississippi State
Bulldogs T-shirt (64), and the picture of the professor with an afro
haircut (111). The pictures in the book show Mississippi for what
it is. It shows the stereotype of Mississippi as a place with
endless stretches of crops and large fields of cotton. However,
it also shows pictures of Jackson State University, a predominantly
African American university. It shows the medical doctors in
Jackson that are directly contrary to the Mississippi stereotype.
There are photographs of fighter pilots from Mississippi.
Keating's pictures show the American Indian influence on
Mississippi. Every imaginable angle of Mississippi can be seen in
Keating's pictures.
I enjoyed this book and I
would recommend it especially to Mississippians. People
from all walks of life would enjoy Mississippi.
This is because the book does not focus on the traditional stereotype
of Mississippi and instead focuses on every aspect of
Mississippi. I think that older readers would appreciate this
book more than younger because the older readers would be able to
identify with some of the events talked about in the book that younger
readers would not be aware of. Of course, a reader of any age
would be able to appreciate the photography. As I said before,
the reader must be patient as he reads because Keating does include a
lot of details, some of which can be tedious. However, this
helps the reader to grasp a total picture of what is being
described. I am afraid that if a reader were from a different
state, he might not enjoy this book as much because it would not affect
him directly. I don't feel that there is anything in this book
that would offend people, although there is one reference to
prostitution which used to occur in one place in Mississippi.
However, overall, I would recommend this book to anyone from
Mississippi.
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An Interview with Bern Keating
by Jeremy Jinkerson (SHS)
Who is/are your favorite author(s)?
I
cannot answer that. Just as fast as I start to type the French
playwright Marcel Pagnol I remember another Frenchman Marcel Ayme (I
Speak fluent French and in recent years read almost nothing but French)
- and from there to a dozen others. Pagnol and Ayme are not even
at the top of the list, now that I reflect a bit. But for getting
myself in the mood to start a new piece, I frequently get down a book
by E. B. White and read it lovingly, trying to soak up the urbanity of
the style. Nothing wrong with A. J. Leibling as a spark plug to
get my engine started. As guides for modern essay writers, they
are the top.
Who was your biggest influence growing up?
My
father, a rigidly honest man who sparked all gatherings by being
devilishly handsome, singing with a glorious Irish tenor voice and
telling fascinating stories, true or false, as any true Irishman can.
What was your primary reason for writing the book Mississippi?
I
had lived in something like two dozen places by the time I got out of
the Navy. I had no home. Because my wife lived in McGehee,
Arkansas, she knew vaguely about Greenville just across the
river. For lack of any better idea, she suggested we move
there. I had no better suggestion, so we did, but I must admit I
was dubious about starting a new life in what I considered the
backwoods. Within a year, I was totally captured by the ambiance
of my new home. I loved it. And I wanted to tell the world
about it. So I wrote the book Mississippi.
What is your biggest regret in life?
This
may sound impossibly self satisfied, but I don't have any major
regret. Oh, yes, I do. I wrote one book I wish had never
been printed because the publisher left it full of bad punctuation
added without my knowledge or chance to correct the disaster.
Every possessive its, for instance it spelled it's or its'. I'll
never tell you what book it is. but I wish it had never happened.
When did you first combine your writings with your wife's photography?
For
the first 15 years of my residence in Mississippi, I was the
photographer. I became a writer after I noticed that my wife was
actually taking most of the pictures that bore my byline and that my
very ample caption material was being run without editing as the main
article with a fictitious editor's name as the supposed author.
No pay for me as the writer, of course, because I was being paid for
the photographs. So I gave her the cameras and went to my
keyboard and declared myself a writer, which is what I had really
wanted to be all my life. This episode happened with the
publication of American Heritage's Illustrated History of the Civil War
in which most of the modern photos of battle sites are by Franke,
though they carry my byline. From then on, I was the writer and
she the photographer.
Are you working on a book right now?
Yes,
I am dabbling away at my memoirs. I have some good stories to
tell - after all, I made a round the world trip to 36 countries and
landed in some places where they had never before seen a white
man. such places don't exist any more. So I can tell about
a vanished world. The only problem is that I do not have an
advance on the book and so no deadline. I find it hard to work
without a deadline prodding me.
Are you a member of any literary organizations?
You
see my memberships across the bottom of this letter. I should add
that I am the founder of the Travel Journalists League, limited by the
constitution to 75 members from the top of the profession.
What advice would you give to young writers?
Write at least 500 words every day - I mean EVERY day.
In what ways has living in Mississippi influenced your work?
Somebody else will have to answer this one - some critic who can see things I am too close to the work to see for myself.
Do you have any works in progress?
I
am still writing occasional travel articles. I have just
delivered two articles written after a tour of the Luberon region of
France. Also an article about a train across clean across the
southern United States.
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Related Websites
Keating,
who has written more than 30 nonfiction books on subjects ranging
from the Mississippi River to the Old West, is host for Day
8 of "Down the Mississippi: The Pulse of America."
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Bibliography
Amazon.com Bern Keating Book List. Online. Internet. 26 Mar. 2001. Available: http://www.amazon.com/comexec/obidos/search-handle-form/107-4418786-3503743
Atdena, Helena. Mississippi Writers Directory and Literary Guide. Oxford. Oxford UP, 1995. 31.
"Bern Keating Gets Award". Starkville Daily News 23 Feb. 1997: 4F.
Cox, James L. Mississippi Almanac 1997-1998 The Ultimate Reference on the State. Tallahassee: Oxford UP., 1971. 417.
Foster, Cynthia, representative of the University Press of Mississippi. E-mail Interview. 3 April 2001.
Keating, Bern. Mississippi. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987.
Keating, Bern. Personal Interview. 18 April, 2001.
Lloyd, James. B. Lives of Mississippi Authors 1817-1967. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1981. 277-279.
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