Synopses & Reviews
Jack Kerouac. Allen Ginsberg. William S. Burroughs. LeRoi Jones. Theirs are the names primarily associated with the Beat Generation. But what about Joyce Johnson (nee Glassman), Edie Parker, Elise Cowen, Diane Di Prima, and dozens of others? These female friends and lovers of the famous iconoclasts are now beginning to be recognized for their own roles in forging the Beat movement and for their daring attempts to live as freely as did the men in their circle a decade before Women's Liberation. Twenty-one-year-old Joyce Johnson, an aspiring novelist and a secretary at a New York literary agency, fell in love with Jack Kerouac on a blind date arranged by Allen Ginsberg nine months before the publication of On the Road made Kerouac an instant celebrity. While Kerouac traveled to Tangiers, San Francisco, and Mexico City, Johnson roamed the streets of the East Village, where she found herself in the midst of the cultural revolution the Beats had created. Minor Characters portrays the turbulent years of her relationship with Kerouac with extraordinary wit and love and a cool, critical eye, introducing the reader to a lesser known but purely original American voice: her own.
Review
Wonderful...conveys Johnson's own growth as a woman and writer in the 1950s, absorbing Kerouac's remarkable freedom. —The New York Times Book Review
Review
“An intense and wonderful exploration into the mind of Jack Kerouac, the hard territory and brutal experiences that produced him and his own fierce determination to become a writer….Johnson succeeds in blowing apart many of the stereotypes of Kerouac as an author and as a man.” —Dylan Foley,
Chicago Tribune “Spectacular…definitely the Kerouac book for
our time…traces the birth of a literary genius and dispels many of the Kerouac myths: that he wrote from memory, not the imagination, and that he wrote spontaneously and without revising…Johnson knows how to create suspense and weave the complex lives of her characters into a narrative that rumbles along…her own voice is eloquent, her prose clear and crisp.” —Jonah Raskin,
San Francisco Chronicle “A major new biography that traces the gradual emergence of the voice that came to define Kerouacs distinctive style of autobiographical fiction…Johnson redirects our focus to Kerouacs writing - an aspect that has been overshadowed by his legend.” —Lauren Du Graf,
The Daily Beast “Johnson has wisely chosen to emphasize the part of Kerouacs life all but lost in the Kerouac legend: Behind the coast-to-coast craziness, the drug- and booze-inspired flights of mysticism, the Benzedrine-fueled writing sprees, a very serious writer was at work.” —Bill Marvel,
The Dallas Morning News “[A] remarkable new biography…the final section of this book take on the urgency of a thriller reaching its climax. So closely does Johnson track Kerouacs evolution as a writer that one senses a breakthrough right around the corner.” —John Freeman, Barnes and Noble review
“In The Voice is All, Johnson brilliantly and intimately gets beyond the Kerouac legend to the solitary soul of the man...she has infused Kerouacs work with excitement, struggle, desperation, and love.” —Royal Young, Interviewmagazine.com
“Johnson, an award-winning memoirist in her own right, draws from her relationship with Kerouac, as well as Kerouacs private papers, for an unromanticized (but deeply personal) take on a man whose conflicted, roving essence continues to resonate.” —Megan OGrady, vogue.com
“A magnificent bildungsroman biography…Johnson has poured herself into the book in the way artists to works of the imagination…more rewarding than Johnsons inside storytelling are her insights into Kerouacs ambitions as a writer.” —Mindy Aloff, The Virginia Quarterly Review
“Johnson proves herself to be a rigorous, knowledgeable, and penetrating biographer in this engrossing portrait of Kerouac as a divided soul…she offers exceptionally lucid coverage of his depression, alcoholism, and every significant relationship in his surging life…most valuable is Johnsons discerning analysis of what Kerouac hoped to achieve in his by-turns exalted and anguished transmutation of experience into literature.” —Donna Seaman, ALA Booklist
“Johnson brings an outsiders perspective to this insightful study of how Kerouac found his voice as a writer…[she] excels in her colorful, candid assessment of the evolution of [Kerouacs] voice.” —Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
On a blind date in Greenwich Village set up by Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Johnson (then Joyce Glassman) met Jack Kerouac in January 1957, nine months before he became famous overnight with the publication of On the Road. She was an adventurous, independent-minded twenty-one-year-old; Kerouac was already running on empty at thirty-five. This unique book, containing the many letters the two of them wrote to each other, reveals a surprisingly tender side of Kerouac. It also shares the vivid and unusual perspective of what it meant to be young, Beat, and a woman in the Cold War fifties. Reflecting on those tumultuous years, Johnson seamlessly interweaves letters and commentary, bringing to life her love affair with one of American letters' most fascinating and enigmatic figures.
Synopsis
A groundbreaking new biography of Jack Kerouac from the author of the award-winning memoir Minor Characters Joyce Johnson brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend in this compelling new book. Tracking Kerouacs development from his boyhood in Lowell, Massachusetts, through his fateful encounters with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and John Clellon Holmes to his periods of solitude and the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in his composition of On the Road followed by Visions of Cody, Johnson shows how his French Canadian background drove him to forge a voice that could contain his dualities and informed his unique outsiders vision of America. This revelatory portrait deepens our understanding of a man whose life and work hold an enduring place in both popular culture and literary history.
About the Author
Jack Kerouac(1922-1969), the central figure of the Beat Generation, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922 and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969. Among his many novels are
On the Road,
The Dharma Bums,
Big Sur, and
Visions of Cody.
Joyce Johnson is the author of three novels, including The Night Café. Her other books include Minor Characters, which was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957–1958.
Joyce Johnson is the author of three novels, including The Night Café. Her other books include Minor Characters, which was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957–1958.
Joyce Johnson is the author of three novels, including The Night Café. Her other books include Minor Characters, which was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957–1958.