| Subcategories |
 |
Literature & Fiction |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters 1957-1958
written by Joyce Johnson, Jack Kerouac
Studio : Penguin (Non-Classics)
by Penguin (Non-Classics)
Publisher : Penguin (Non-Classics)
Released : 2001-06-01
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780141001876
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 13 reviews)
List Price : $15.00
Our Price : $2.05
|
|
| |
|
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. |
| |
|
Americancivilwar.com Review |
|
They met in early 1957, eight months before the publication of On the Road made Jack Kerouac the most famous young writer in America. Some of the bitterest, saddest letters Kerouac wrote to his 21-year-old lover, Joyce Glassman, reveal the personal cost of the hysterical media attention that followed. Yet their early correspondence shows a side of Kerouac not always evident in his fiction: tender, spiritual, and supportive of Glassman's efforts to write her first novel. Now known as Joyce Johnson, she supplements the text of their epistles with commentary whose sensitive, rueful tone will be familiar to readers of her memoir, Minor Characters. The loving but independent air she assumed in her letters, Johnson notes, came from painful rewriting to eliminate all hints of hurt or need; as he wandered in and out of her life, Kerouac kept reminding her he didn't want to be tied down, even as he urged her to come visit whatever city he'd alighted in. Spiced with marvelously evocative period slang like dig and swing, and references to friends such as Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, this poignant epistolary record of a 22-month love affair also brings to life an exciting moment in American cultural history, when the Beat writers gave "powerful, irresistible voices to subversive longings." --Wendy Smith |
| |
|
| |
|
Joyce Johnson is ruining my life. |
And so is Jack Kerouac. He is also ruining my life.
I love Joyce Johnson. She is so amazingly insightful and humble and has this ability to tell a story without being competitive or passive aggressive.
These letters made me smile, frustrated me and made me cover my eyes in embarrassment. A great read!
|
| |
|
Do what you want, Jerce... |
That's something Jack told Joyce once and I think it sums about a great deal about his personal outlook on life. He wrote to Joyce in 1958: "Your salvation is within yourself, in your own essence of mind, it is not to be gotten grasping at external people like me" Overall, this book gave me pure enjoyment.It's filled with inspiration and advice written between two people one generation apart connected by their souls travelling similar paths. Joyce's social life is tied to the Beats; who are of course all over the globe living freely. She is the steadfast port-of-call in NYC holding all the pieces together. As Jack is travelling on his adventures throughout Tangiers, San Francisco, Mexico, and Orlando she keeps him up-to-date on news and gossip. As a fellow female, Joyce is someone I can relate to and enjoy spending time with. She is not your typical "girly" girl! She has talent, opinions and a strong grip on her feelings. Whenever she wrote how much she cared for Jack in her letters to him, I always ached inside because I could imagine what a trying situation this all was; loving such a roaming spirit as Kerouac. Still she was young at the time and it was an experience of a lifetime sharing her thoughts and feelings with a man who opened up to her in all honesty. Of course, there was no guidelines for the kind of relationship she had with JeanLouis. He would come and go in and out of her life, but they had a strong relationship through letters. Through her letters Joyce proves to be just as tough and free spirited as the men in her group ("...dexamyl pill has taken effect...and I better start on the novel now), but as a woman she longed for a committment and stability. An interesing combination. Ginsberg was a genius setting these two up that night in 1957. I'm just getting into the Kerouac world and I loved learning more about his personality (its ever-moving organic quality) and personal life. It adds more meat to his novels. I loved reading his thoughts on composing Dharma Bums and his literary advice to Joyce was priceless: Never Revise!!!
In the end Jack did what he wanted with their relationship and I think it was for the best. After all "unrequited love is a bore".
Joyce is a lovely writer and I'm gonna read Minor Characters as soon as possible! Onto more Kerouac... |
| |
|
Groan... |
|
I'm not sure why everyone else has rated this book so highly--I've found it to be quite banal, and sometimes down-right painful to read. Johnson comes across as a bland, naive and gullable girl who tries to play up to Kerouac in order to win his dubious affection. Her letters are written in a most childish and lame manner, and I can't believe that she was published a few years later. I hate to say such a thing, but it's true. Needless to say, their affair--calling it a love affir is streaching it a tad--eventually ends, and now forty years later she's decided to publish their exchange of letters in order to assure her fifteen minutes of fame. The fact that this book does provide a little insight into Kerouac keeps it from being two stars. |
| |
|
An Open Door Offering Insight To The Beat Generation & Love! |
|
Jack Kerouac warned Joyce Johnson, nee Glassman, on the first night they spent together, back in 1957, "I don't like blondes." In spite of their inauspicious beginning, Kerouac kept returning to Glassman over a period of two years, during which time he restlessly wandered the US and Mexico. They met on a blind date set up by poet Allen Ginsberg, almost a year before Kerouac's name became a household word with the publication of "On The Road." She was an intelligent, talented, independent twenty-one year-old, and he was thirty-five, "pop-culture's guy's guy," "The King of the Beats," on the brink of enormous success. This collection of letters, poems and postcards, between Kerouac and Ms. Glassman, written over a two-year period, are interspersed with Glassman's elegant, focused writing, as she poignantly comments on their relationship and the times. Glassman-Johnson wrote in her Beat Generation memoir, "Minor Characters," "If time were like a passage of music, you could keep going back to it till you got it right." This sense of sadness and longing permeates the book. She gives an insightful view of what it was like to be a "liberated woman" and an aspiring author back in the late 1950s. Her crowd may have been Beat Generation icons, but a double standard was still the norm. Glassman's struggle to be a writer of consequence, and her battle against the mores of the day, "illustrate the disparity between the myth and reality of the Beat experience." She really shows what it was like to be young, female and Beat during the Eisenhower years. Kerouac's correspondence, filled with his spontaneous prose and 50s slang, gives the reader an amazing portrait of his struggle with fame and the attacks by his critics against his subsequent works. Throughout his travels, he tried, in a limited way, to balance this important relationship with a woman who truly understood him more than most people ever would. He did show a capacity for tenderness, as he formed a bond with Glassman, who shared his passion for writing. Yet Glassman wanted a more lasting relationship, which eventually caused their break-up. "You're nothing but a big bag of wind," she informed Kerouac before she left him. Eventually they did form a friendship. Most of the text is dominated by their romantic relationship. However, there are wonderful glimpses of the "beatnik scene," Greenwich Village in the 50s, Allen Ginsberg, the Orlovskys, Elise Cowan, and Neal Cassidy. This is as much the story of Joyce Glassman Johnson's growth as a woman and writer, as it is about Jack Kerouac and the Beat generation. "Door Wide Open" is an extraordinarily sensitive portrayal of a man, a woman, a relationship and a time that strongly influenced, (and still does), the arts, literature and culture in the US - a wonderful book!
JANA |
| |
|
Door Wide Open |
|
Beautiful and elegant. Any woman who's ever been in love with a difficult man will appreciate Joyce Johnson's bittersweet romance. |
| |
|
|
|
