Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir

Written by Joyce Johnson and Ann Douglas

Narrated by Samara Naeymi

Named one of the 50 best memoirs of the past 50 years by The New York Times

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

“Among the great American literary memoirs of the past century . . . a riveting portrait of an era . . . Johnson captures this period with deep clarity and moving insight.” – Dwight Garner, The New York Times

In 1954, Joyce Johnson’s Barnard professor told his class that most women could never have the kinds of experiences that would be worth writing about. Attitudes like that were not at all unusual at a time when “good” women didn’t leave home or have sex before they married; even those who broke the rules could merely expect to be minor characters in the dramas played by men. But secret rebels, like Joyce and her classmate Elise Cowen, refused to accept things as they were.

As a teenager, Johnson stole down to Greenwich Village to sing folksongs in Washington Square. She was 21 and had started her first novel when Allen Ginsberg introduced her to Jack Kerouac; nine months later she was with Kerouac when the publication of On the Road made him famous overnight. Joyce had longed to go on the road with him; instead she got a front seat at a cultural revolution under attack from all sides; made new friends like Hettie and LeRoi Jones, and found herself fighting to keep the shy, charismatic, tormented Kerouac from destroying himself. It was a woman’s adventure and a fast education in life. What Johnson and other Beat Generation women would discover were the risks, the heartache and the heady excitement of trying to live as freely as the rebels they loved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Mar 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781713551973

Joyce Johnson

Joyce Johnson's eight books include the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award winner Minor Characters, the recent memoir Missing Men, the novel In the Night Cafe, and Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters 1957-1958 (with Jack Kerouac). She has written for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and lives in New York City.

Reviews for Minor Characters

[the7ken7petersen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A believable, very feminine biography. Jack Kerouac, the great rebel, portrayed as a little lost boy clinging to his mum. This is the story of Joyce Johnson through the years during which she was associated with Jack, as a friend, a lover and a survivor. There is no bitterness, a lot of love and a critical eye which saw through BS like a diamond tipped scalpel. Kerouac was one of the beatnik generation, a man who achieved his goal only to find that, like his most famous work, the road was the best bit. A five star story which fades away, just when the big denouement is expected - how like life. Creditable walk on parts are taken by Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Howard Schulman and Elise.

[elliottrainbow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I bought this book not knowing what to expect. I knew very little of Joyce Johnson and I guess I thought this book would be a tale of she dated the most famous writer of the Beat Generation and it was claim to fame. Boy, was I wrong. Joyce Johnson talks about so much more than Jack Kerouac that if she had left him out of the book it would still have been a great memoir. There are not many books I read that I wish had another 200 or more pages to go through, but this is one time that I think the book should have been longer. Joyce Johnson is an absolutely wonderful, lyrical, gifted writer. She makes you care about each person in the book. I actually found myself upset when she tells of best friend Elise's suicide. It was easy to imagine as if she were my friend as well, she is described in detail by Joyce. Joyce's sequel to this book Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters is just as good, and so is her second memoir Missing Men. But I think this is her masterpiece.

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A riveting account of what it was like to be female in the fifties when women were considered secondary kinds of people who existed only to service and wait on the men. I remember trying to read On the Road forty-plus years ago and putting it aside because it seemed, at the time, nearly unreadable. Joyce's account of her own life uses small excerpts from Kerouac's books. If they are representative, then I'd probably still find him unreadable. I guess I don't get it. But Johnson's own writing style and her personal story are extremely readable - and interesting. I'm on her side. Her comment near the end of the book about what the beat poets and writers were all about seems to sum it up nicely: "I think it was about the right to remain children." This is an excellent book about the Beats, from a woman who was there and who tried to love Jack Kerouac, who was, as it turned out, incapable of returning love. Wise, sad, and eloquent.