- Paperback: 182 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books (Jun 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0141001879
- ISBN-13: 978-0141001876
- Product Dimensions: 19.7 x 12.9 x 1.6 cm
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
40,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19 in Books > Fiction > Poetry & Drama > Essays, Journals & Letters > 20th Century
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Product Description
Product Description
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.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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15 reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Another Milestone for Joyce Johnson
3 Jun 2000
Format:Hardcover
In Doors Wide Open, Joyce Johnson has accomplished the seemingly impossible--expanded both historically and emotionally on her award-winning memoir, Minor Characters, illuminating with even more candor and care her relationship with Jack Kerouac. We readers are the beneficiaries of both her legal freedom and personal willingness to continue her story. With so much dubious scholarship and questionable intention to be found in books on Kerouac and the beats, from an assortment of writers claiming to be "insiders," Johnson provides a voice both vulnerable and true as she returns to a time and place she remembers perhaps as well as anyone still living. In her correspondence with Kerouac at a pivotal point in both of their lives, we bear witness to the twin agonies of genius and celebrity, and glimpse through a lens of most tender intimacy the very real people behind the mythology that so swiftly became the beat movement. Highly recommended.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
The Beats Go On
16 Jun 2000
Format:Hardcover
Almost 30 years after his premature death, we are just beginning to see Jack Kerouac objectively as an artist. Joyce Johnson's collection of letters shows a side of Kerouac more like Big Sur than On The Road--he's not so much the travelling hipster as the thoughtful artist. Kerouac never quite got to the point in his artistic development where he pleased himself with his own writing. He was always ambitious and always frustrated with words. He was hammering out a new style of prose, but much of his audience seemed unaware of his influences. There were too many readers out there who just wanted to be beatniks and not enough who had read Thomas Wolfe and Theodore Dreiser and the others who inspired On The Road.
The Selected Letters of Jack Kerouac as edited by Ann Charters now take up two volumes. I have not compared those two books with the proof I read of Doors Wide Open, and I do not know whether there is any overlap, but I enjoyed Joyce Johnson's collection. There are not enough female voices among what we call the Beat Generation, but hers is a complement to Kerouac. I think their relationship inspired him to open up in ways he could not to others. This is a great addition to Johnson's earlier memoir, Minor Characters, which was published more than ten years ago. It is good to have the Kerouac letters, but it is a fine thing to see this woman come out of the shadows and find her own voice after all these years.
When can we expect Joyce Johnson's first novel?
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Voyeurs and Artists delight
6 Aug 2000
Format:Hardcover
If you ever felt disconnected to yourself - this is a great read. I was also the little girl who wanted to snoop in everyone's closets, and yes - read your diary, so this book held my fancy. It is a wonderful book about a woman in the 1950's (who could have been in the 1990's) who was struggling to BE in New York City. She was struggling to be a writer, a friend an artist and herself. I found Joyce Johnson's voice honest and sensitive and this book made me want to go read her novels - not Jack Kerouac. If you have ever loved anyone you suspected was just too cool for you, this book will also be meaningful, you see how that cool person may be suffering their own provate torments as Jack was.
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