Minor Characters

A Beat Memoir

De: Joyce Johnson, Ann Douglas - introduction

Narrado por: 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.

©1983, 1994 by Joyce Johnson. Introduction © 1999 by Ann Douglas. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“This little known Beat Generation memoir uncovers the hidden female characters who played pivotal roles in the progression of the 1950s literary movement. One can imagine how Hannah’s bookish heart beats to the drum of figures like Edie Parker and Elise Cowen and Joyce Johnson.” (Lena Dunham)

“Rich and beautifully written, full of vivid portraits and evocations of the major Beat voices and the minor characters, their women.” (Anne Lamott, The San Francisco Chronicle)

"Joyce Johnson hands over to us the safe-deposit box that contains lost, precious scrolls of the New York '50s." (The Washington Post)

If you truly want to understand the Beat Generation

This is the book, years ago, that helped me to finally “get” Kerouac and his work. I had already read On the Road and Dharma Bums and enjoyed them, but Minor Characters provides the deep, panoramic background of the genesis to the Beat Generation, adding a whole new reason to love the work. Joyce Johnson is a marvelous writer who lovingly illuminates previously unrevealed details of that mad, lovely, dark time when American literature took flight from the best minds of a restless, brilliant generation that changed everything.

Love this story

Great performance, great story, always want more of these stories! Joyce is a perfect example of someone on the sidelines but talented enough to be in the game…sad truth of life as women but wonderful story to bring to light now