Defrocked newsman Dorsey finds bliss as offbeat Florida novelist

Tim Dorsey is one of my favorite people in the world. His maniacal Florida novels make me laugh out loud. How much is that worth? Sure, it can make for some quizzical looks around the swimming pool, but that is a small price to pay.

My Man Dorsey is a defrocked newsman (Tampa Tribune) who took the high writing road and joined the cabal of red-hot Florida novelists with his decidedly offbeat “Florida Roadkill.” Think the heavily armed Marx Brothers on an unhealthy dose of amphetamines speeding through Miami in a stolen Cadillac with a body in the trunk.

Since that auspicious beginning, he has followed up with “Hammerhead Ranch Motel,” “Orange Crush,” “Triggerfish Twist,” “Stingray Shuffle” and the new one, “Cadillac Beach.” Even the staid New York Times calls him “insanely funny” with the emphasis on insane.

I had sworn off additional book purchases, since I had about 20 unread volumes from Amazon.com. I took all the virgin copies on my Florida trip. But last week, I made the mistake of going into Barnes and Noble to ask for directions. I should have known better. I walked out $40 poorer with the latest Elmore Leonard and the latest Dorsey.

When I was halfway through “Cadillac,” I read in the Fort Myers newspaper that the author would speak the next day at a library fund-raiser at a waterfront park within walking distance of the hotel. My life can be wonderful. I was the first one there, arriving when they were setting up the folding chairs.

He gave full credit to Florida author James Hall and his “Bones of Coral” for getting him off his newspaper duff and starting him writing books. His characters, he said, came from the passing parade of criminals, ne’er-do-wells, and attorneys he met in his newspaper days, augmented by his roommates at Auburn University.

“I killed all the people that [irritated me] in Tampa,” he admitted.

His most outstanding character is Serge A. Storms, an escaped mental patient who has decided he no longer needs his meds or any of the normal bounds of society. As he was praising “Bones of Coral” for capturing “the true essence of Florida,” a passer-by talking loudly (is there any other way?) on his cell phone wandered past Dorsey’s stage, drowning out the author. Dorsey laughed. “That is the essence of Florida,” he said.

As the cell phoner walked away, Dorsey yelled, “Serge would have killed you.”

The agents in New York City praised Dorsey’s “imagination” for creating such extreme characters as Serge. But the local reporters, cops and criminals think of Dorsey’s work as “a documentary,” he said.

Clearly, Dorsey is a happy man. As he is writing his books, “my characters make me laugh so much that I often wake up my wife in the middle of the night.” He said he wrote his first book “just for the fun of it. I never, ever expected it to get published. How dare I step of the same playing field as Carl Hiassen, Jim Hall and Randy Wayne White? I used up all of my ideas in the first book and then my agent told me I had to write another one in six months.”

But he turned out “Hammerhead Ranch Motel” in time and was off to the races. “I still pinch myself all the time. I can’t believe that I don’t have to go into the newspaper office any more.”

The trick to writing is reading, Dorsey told his audience. He started by ignoring the required reading list as a teenager and branched off into “Catch-22,” “Catcher in the Rye” and “Naked Lunch.”

As he again went back to credit “Bones of Coral,” James Hall actually walked by the back of the audience. Dorsey laughed at the coincidence and said “That’s Florida.”

There is a theory that all the misfits and criminals head to Florida once they have soiled their local nests. Certainly, few of them head north.

Dorsey, dressed in a trademark Hawaiian flower shirt, said this success will not last forever and he planned to enjoy every step along the way. As his fans took pictures of Dorsey, he stepped far back on the stage, asked everyone to wave and took their picture.

Florida.

He admitted a close personal relationship with Randy Wayne White, one of the chroniclers of adventures on Sanibel and Captiva, islands just off Fort Myers.

White surprised Dorsey when he invited the author to his Sanibel home to meet an (unnamed) major league hero. Dorsey met the ballplayer and his girlfriend and even played catch with the ballplayer. He was so excited that he took a picture of the group, had it blown up, framed and matted, then mailed it to the (unnamed) ballplayer’s home. It was about three days later that Dorsey got the e-mail from Mrs. ballplayer. “Thanks for the picture of my husband cheating on me with that slut,” or words to that effect were included in the e-mail. A divorce ensued, much to the consternation of Mr. Ballplayer.

But as Tim Dorsey would say “That is the essence of Florida.”

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.