Point and Shoot, Florida (YU)--Heap drove over to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to visit the Walter Anderson Museum of Art.

He had lost his job. The bank was saying the F word.

Foreclosure. He was about to lose his house.

Owen was on the road with a band. Balder had enlisted in the Marines, to be in a Marine band. He would get the GI Bill in the Marine Corps, and could go to college, after he got out of the Marines.

Reading about Anderson's life, in the book his wife, Cissy, wrote about him, Approaching the Magic Hour, and the excerpts from Anderson's Horn Island Logs, inspired Heap.

He also identified with Anderson.

Heap wrote the Division of Cultural Affairs and asked them to help him find a publisher for the books of his stack. Perhaps the University Press of Florida. Perhaps an independent publisher.

Perhaps they could get the legislature to subsidize their publication.

He asked them to help him sell the original manuscripts. Perhaps to the library at his alma mater, Florida State University. Perhaps to the State Library.

He also contacted the State Library, the library at FSU, and the University Press of Florida, independently.

He copied all of the addressees to each other's letters.

If they thought it was a joke, it wasn't.

Heap was serious.

It was a cry of help.

The University Press of Florida said they only published scholarly work, or work of regional interest.

Heap thought his work was scholarly, or of regional interest.

The State Library said they didn't buy manuscripts, Archives, upstairs, did. They didn't forward his letter to Archives, or give him the name of anyone in Archives to contact.

The library at FSU said they were broke, and not buying any manuscripts just then.

The Division of Cultural Affairs did not reply.

Heap defined a Florida writer as a writer treated by academics, arts bureaucrats, and so forth, in his state, as Heap was treated by the academics, arts bureaucrats, and so forth, in Florida. By that reckoning, Thoreau and Faulkner were Florida writers, in their prime, when they needed help, and didn't get it. You could say they died prematurely for lack of it. Think what they might have done with a little more support, a little sooner.