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Title: Minor Characters: A Young Woman's Coming-Of-Age in the Beat Orbit of Jack Kerouac by Joyce Johnson, Ann Douglas ISBN: 0-14-028357-9 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: July, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.9 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Read it for Joyce, not just Jack
Comment: Joyce Johnson's memoir of emerging from an overprotected childhood and landing at the center of the Beat movement in the 1950's is a delight whether you choose to read it for its portrait of Jack Kerouac, for the world that was, or for the inner journey it reveals. It is a fine literary performance. Johnson plays with tense and perspective as if they form a telescopic lens sliding the past out of a fuzzy black and white still photograph into a vivid, colorful present. There is a suspenseful tension to the book from which flows a novelistic structure, never, though, at the expense of truth. Johnson gets down like no one else how it is to carry around that overprotected childhood, to always feel that you could be missing something, that the center has yet to be achieved. Her inner struggle matches the themes of the Beats who are seeking the pure experience of being through their music, their talk, their drugs and alcohol, their lovemaking, their travels and their poetry. She nails the paradox of a quarry that can never sit still, whether it is a person, like Kerouac, or her friend and guide into the Beat world, Elise Cowen, both of whom eventually disappear into their demons. She captures the loss of balance when counterculture is encroached upon by the mainstream. She manages to convey all this without telling, just through showing the events of her life. Johnson is wry but never bitter, she takes full responsibility for her own choices and actions. This is a book that invites the reader to share the wonder that this was all, indeed, real.
Rating: 5
Summary: yes, that's IT!
Comment: Wow. This book did more for me than I expected it to. I picked it up for the same reason many others probalby did - because of my interest in Kerouac. But Johnson is not telling his story, she is telling hers. And, despite obvious difficulties and social aspects that let us know it is the fifties, it is really a timeless story, something that can be identified with today. She has put into words what every female person who feels like they don't quite belong in the society in which they grew up has difficulties articulating. I found myself talking to the book - "Yes, that's IT! Exactly." I read this book twice this month.
Her unique and fresh writing style should not be overlooked either. She wrote this book at a good time in her life as well, it is reflective and filled with the insight and intelligence of years and experience.
Rating: 5
Summary: She makes getting a cup of coffee in the Village exciting.
Comment: I picked up this book because a friend recommended it. The Beats had never much interested me except as a movement. I didn't much like the the literature or the adulation that surrounded them. But this is primarily a book about Joyce Johnson and her experience with the Beats. She has a real talent for evoking a specific time and place and giving readers a sense of what it was like to be part of this mileu. She makes going for a cup of coffee in Greenwich Village seem incredibly exciting. This is not the story of a Beat groupie yearning to hang out or sleep with famous men but rather Ms. Johnson's coming of age. The Beats are an important part of that story but not the whole story.
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Title: Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution by Brenda Knight, Anne Waldman, Ann Charters ISBN: 1573241385 Publisher: Conari Pr Pub. Date: November, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Memoirs of a Beatnik by Diane Di Prima, Diana Di Prima ISBN: 0140235396 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Off the Road: My Years With Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg by Carolyn Cassady ISBN: 014015390X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1991 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: How I Became Hettie Jones by Hettie Jones ISBN: 0802134963 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958 by Jack Kerouac, Joyce Johnson ISBN: 0141001879 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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