Minor Characters: a Young Woman's Coming-of-Age in the Beat Orbit of Jack Kerouac - Softcover

Johnson, Joyce

4.07

2,722 ratings by Goodreads

9780385475303: Minor Characters: a Young Woman's Coming-of-Age in the Beat Orbit of Jack Kerouac

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385475306 ISBN 13: 9780385475303

Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1994

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Minor Characters is a vivid and compelling memoir of one woman's coming-of-age amidst the angels and poets of the Beat Generation. The friend and lover of Jack Kerouac during the two years surrounding the publication of On the Road - the book that made him suddenly and forever famous - Joyce Johnson describes with penetrating insight the circle of rebellious visionaries of which she became a part: Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, LeRoi Jones, Gregory Corso.
But more than just chronicling the drama of her life with Kerouac, Johnson describes the roles that she and other women in her circle played as companions and acolytes to their male muses, women who set aside their own needs and ambitions, for a time, even as they searched to find their own voices and shape their own lives.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

"'This is the muses's side of the story, it turns out the muse could write as well as anybody.' Angela Carter 'Rich and beautifully written, full of vivid portraits and evocations... of the major beat voices and the minor characters, their women.' San Francisco Chronicle 'Minor Characters is an avowedly nostalgic portrait that captures the excitement, the strangeness and the often mis-directed and destructive energy of those lost days,' The Philadelphia Inquirer 'Realistic rather than flamboyant, [Johnson] succeeds in portraying the Beats not as oddities or celebrities but as individuals.' The New Yorker"

About the Author:

Joyce Johnson is the author of three novels: In the Night Cafe, Bad Connections, and Come and Join the Dance. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine and New York. She is the winner of the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award, first prize in the 1987 O. Henry Awards, and a 1992 NEA fellowship. She has taught creative writing for many years.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.