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$8.49
1. Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir
$2.40
2. In the Night Cafe
$13.46
3. Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified
$12.26
4. Joyce Carol Oates: Conversations
$4.44
5. Missing Men: A Memoir
 
$7.19
6. Minor Characters
 
7. Bad Connections
$0.99
8. Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair
9. Joyce Carol Oates: A Study of
$21.95
10. Understanding Joyce Carol Oates
$53.01
11. Reading on the Edge: Exiles, Modernities,
 
12. Wingtrace/the sign of its track:
 
$2.91
13. Rough Magic (Rainbow Romance)
$4.99
14. Writings of The Ages
$5.99
15. Drurys Gazette Issue One 2004
$5.99
16. Drurys Gazette Issue Five 2005
$5.99
17. Drurys Gazette Issue Two 2005
$15.00
18. Techniques in Clinical Nursing
 
$20.59
19. Forever In My Heart (Linford Romance
$5.99
20. Drurys Gazette Issue One 2006

1. Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir
by Joyce Johnson
Paperback: 304 Pages (1999-07-01)
list price: US$15.00 -- used & new: US$8.49
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0140283579
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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Editorial Review

Product Description
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Johnson's Beat memoir is "the safe-deposit box that contains the last, precious scrolls of the New York '50s" (The Washington Post).

Jack Kerouac. Allen Ginsberg. William S. Burroughs. LeRoi Jones. Theirs are the names primarily associated with the Beat Generation. But what about Joyce Johnson (nee Glassman), Edie Parker, Elise Cowen, Diane Di Prima, and dozens of others? These female friends and lovers of the famous iconoclasts are now beginning to be recognized for their own roles in forging the Beat movement and for their daring attempts to live as freely as did the men in their circle a decade before Women's Liberation.

Twenty-one-year-old Joyce Johnson, an aspiring novelist and a secretary at a New York literary agency, fell in love with Jack Kerouac on a blind date arranged by Allen Ginsberg nine months before the publication of On the Road made Kerouac an instant celebrity. While Kerouac traveled to Tangiers, San Francisco, and Mexico City, Johnson roamed the streets of the East Village, where she found herself in the midst of the cultural revolution the Beats had created. Minor Characters portrays the turbulent years of her relationship with Kerouac with extraordinary wit and love and a cool, critical eye, introducing the reader to a lesser known but purely original American voice: her own.

"Rich and beautifully written, full of vivid portraits and evocations." --San Francisco Chronicle

"--A first-rate memoir, very beautiful, very sad." --E. L. Doctorow

"Realistic rather than flamboyant, [Johnson] succeeds in portraying the Beats not as oddities or celebrities but as individuals." --The New Yorker ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

5-0 out of 5 stars To be appreciated
I enjoyed this book. Aptly titled, from it I gleaned yet another perspective on Jack Kerouac's personality, as well as more insights into the 1950's and the intriguing "Beat Generation". A must read for Kerouac and Beat enthusiasts.

4-0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully written
Joyce Johnson's title "Minor Characters" refers to her book's focus on the women who loved, dated, married, fought, and partied with the major male figures of the Beat Generation, including Kerouac, Ginsburg and Burroughs. Joyce herself was Jack Kerouac's girlfriend for a while around the time that his classic "On the Road" was published. It's a shame that the Kerouac connection seems to always be used to push this book, because Joyce was not Jack's girlfriend for all that long, he was absent for a lot of that time and on top of that, her story is interesting, exciting and poetic in its own right even if she'd never dated him.

Joyce recounts how she escaped an overprotective and oppressive childhood that makes the reader wince, as her parents pry into her private life and grill her on her (nonexistent) activities with boys, when they aren't pushing her to become a pianist instead of encouraging her obvious love for and gift of writing.Joyce's efforts as a young teen at fitting in and belonging to the burgeoning Bohemian scene are very relatable to any young girl who's drawn to an exciting new creative world, full of older and potentially dangerous men that are definitely not OK to bring home to Mama. Along the way, Joyce meets and befriends Elise Cowan, another early Beat muse who unlike Joyce comes to a sad end, and Hettie Jones, the wife of poet LeRoi Jones, and she devotes some time to telling each of their stories as well as her own.

I pretty much liked all the women in the book much better than the men before the story was over, but I don't think that was because the author was pushing a feminist agenda.It was more that the women seemed more down to earth and were the ones who always got stuck with responsibilities such as working day jobs and paying bills, while the men were off gallivanting around the city or even the world and generally acting like perpetual teenagers.(By the standards of the next couple of decades, the Beat men were pretty much male chauvinists across the board.) When Joyce and Jack Kerouac break up you don't feel like she's missing out on a lot, not because he's portrayed as a bad guy but simply because he never seems to be there for her that much anyway.You feel like she can do better and from the book's ending, it seems like she eventually did.

I would recommend this book along with "How I Became Hettie Jones" (Hettie's autobiographical memoir) to anyone interested in getting the flavor of the Beat scene from the women's perspective.If you're looking for hard dates and detailed information, you might not find it in this book because its purpose as a memoir is more to set the tone and tell a story, and it accomplishes that purpose very well.

5-0 out of 5 stars A woman's voice emerges from the Beat Gen dungeon
Joyce Johnson's inside view of the Beat movement and her description of the obstacles to a female artist's development in the pre-Lib 50s and 60s is refreshing. It's a sobering reminder that each revolution carries within itself a remnant of the system it aims to dismantle, in this case the repression of a marginalized voice.
Johnson tells her story with simultaneous levity and gravitas, making it an engrossing read. As memoirs go, it couldn't have been more perfectly conceived. It has all the hallmarks of an enduring classic. Fits right in with the underbelly of the Mad Men craze... the independent woman threading her way into the light.

5-0 out of 5 stars Now I remember why I never read Kerouac
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. - Tim Bazzett, author of Pinhead: A Love Story

4-0 out of 5 stars A Minor Character in the Circle of the Beats
I just finished reading this novel yesterday, I loved the novel and how Johnson describes life in that inner circle.I agree with other reviews, do not read this book if you're only interested in Kerouac.What I came to realise was Johnson's point of view was not only to the idea of being a "minor character" in the history it self, but the fact that women during that time frame were only considered minor characters in life.I highly recommend this novel to any. ... Read more


2. In the Night Cafe
by Joyce Johnson
Hardcover: 231 Pages (1989-04-14)
list price: US$17.95 -- used & new: US$2.40
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0525247416
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars
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Customer Reviews (1)

5-0 out of 5 stars Fantastic read!
I picked this book up at a used bookstore in Brooklyn and had no idea who Joyce Johnson was at the time. It's an amazing tale of love, adventure, alcoholism...you name it, it's in there and it's all woven together in a believable, relatible way. Numerous times I was brought to tears by the the simplicity of emotion stated. Johnson has a gift that stands alone, without her history of JK and the beats. ... Read more


3. Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified (Demystified Nursing)
by Joyce Johnson
Paperback: 304 Pages (2007-12-17)
list price: US$24.95 -- used & new: US$13.46
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0071496246
Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars
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Editorial Review

Product Description
The balanced way to learn about fluids and electrolytes

Need a solid foundation in fluids and electrolytes but finding this complex subject difficult to permeate? Here's the solution! Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified makes everything so easy to understand, you'll feel like you're learning through osmosis.

Written by a nursing professor, this accessible guide explains, clearly and concisely, the key elements underlying fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance and imbalances. You will learn about the various health conditions related to imbalances and get details on diagnostic testing, regulators, and treatment options. Useful charts and key terms throughout help you to remember important concepts. Complete with end-of-chapter quizzes to test your knowledge, this book will teach you the fundamentals of fluids and electrolytes in no time at all.

Simple enough for a beginner, but challenging enough for an advanced student, Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified is your shortcut to mastering this essential nursing topic.

This fast and easy guide offers:

  • Learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter
  • An NCLEX-style quiz at the end of each chapter to reinforce learning and pinpoint weaknesses
  • Causes and symptoms of fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base imbalance-related conditions
  • Coverage of diagnostic tests and treatment options
  • A time-saving approach to performing better on an exam or at work

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

2-0 out of 5 stars Limited information and spelling errors
Customer service was good- product arrived before ETA.
I was looking for a book that will offer concise and easy to understand data. This book has simple terminology and information, but lacks more details. If you are looking for a "quick guide/resource" and that's all you want to know- then this is the book for you, but if you are a curious student that wants to learn why things happen in the body regarding the fluid and electrolytes this is not the book. I read other reviews about the spelling errors and sure they are true. ... Read more


4. Joyce Carol Oates: Conversations
Paperback: 300 Pages (2006-11-08)
list price: US$17.95 -- used & new: US$12.26
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0865381186
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars
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Editorial Review

Product Description
An incisive collection of interviews with one of the leading lights of American writing.

Joyce Carol Oates has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award.

In her acceptance speech for the National Book Award in 1970, Joyce Carol Oates remarked that "language is all we have to pit against death and silence." In this remarkable new collection of interviews spanning more than 35 years of Oates's career, she talks candidly and insightfully about literature, the writing life, her background, and many other topics. These interviews should interest not only Oates's many fans but anyone who cares about contemporary American literature.

The interviews range from Robert Phillip's in The Paris Review to Lawrence Grobel's in Playboy. Though previously published, often in literary magazines, the majority have never appeared in book form.

From the Interviews:
"If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function—a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind—then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally I've found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything."
"I take my writing seriously, but I don't take myself seriously…that is, I don't feel pontifical or dogmatic. Writing is an absolutely fascinating activity, an immersion in drama, language, and vision." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

5-0 out of 5 stars A Long-Awaited Updating
It had been years since anyone gathered Oates' recent interviews and discussions under one cover, and this collection is a good one. Drawing for its subject matter the texts of articles and conversations regarding (but mostly by) Oates, from such sources as The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Playboy, and more than a dozen other publications, Johnson, Oates' second most ardent fan after me, has done a sound job as editor of this project. These discussions show Oates as a thoughtful individual, often puzzled by the state of human society, and it is easy to see from her words how her efforts to comprehend the goings-on in this life manifest so often in her books. Within "Conversations" one can learn of Oates's views on Marilyn Monroe, subject of her novel Blonde, her attitudes on race, religion, violence, politics, family, love, the supernatural, and contemporary and past America. Most of all anyone who reads this book will become better informed about Oates' masterful insights into the malleable craft of writing. At times it is desirable to know little about a writer and therefore to have a more filtered and directed experience in reading her or his material, and at other times it is not (such as Sylvia Plath, whose life story has been fried into her works to the point a neutral reading is an impossibility)but with an iconic figure such as Joyce Carol Oates, background knowledge can greatly enhance an appreciation of her nearly one-hundred published books. I really enjoyed Joyce Carol Oates: Conversations, and I'm very glad Mr. Johnson took the time to put this work out there. He has my appreciation. ... Read more


5. Missing Men: A Memoir
by Joyce Johnson
Paperback: 288 Pages (2005-07-05)
list price: US$15.00 -- used & new: US$4.44
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0143035231
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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Editorial Review

Product Description
Joyce Johnson’s classic memoir of growing up female in the 1950s, Minor Characters, was one of the initiators of an important new genre: the personal story of a minor player on history’s stage. In Missing Men, a memoir that tells her mother’s story as well as her own, Johnson constructs an equally unique self-portrait as she examines, from a woman’s perspective, the far-reaching reverberations of fatherlessness. Telling a story that has "shaped itself around absences," Missing Men presents us with the arc and flavor of a unique New York life—from the author’s adventures as a Broadway stage child to her fateful encounters with the two fatherless artists she marries. Joyce Johnson’s voice has never been more compelling.Amazon.com Review
Joyce Johnson has led the kind of life the rest of us only see in novels; who else gets to share a childhood stage with Marlon Brando dressed up as a bear? In her first two works of nonfiction, Door Wide Open and the award-winning Minor Characters, Johnson chronicled a beat coming of age through the lens of her brief relationship with Jack Kerouac. Missing Men fills in the gaps in this bohemian life story even as it highlights them. Fittingly enough for a woman who married two abstract painters, it's a book about negative space. Three extended reminiscences--one for her childhood, one for each of her marriages--tease out the patterns in a life that "shaped itself around absences." Missing men defined those she loved: her iron-willed mother, whose immigrant father killed himself when she was five; her two husbands, each fatherless, each with his own burden of tragedy and rage; Johnson herself, left behind with her freedom and her art. The writing, as always, is lovely and precise. Whether she is recounting the home-sewn dresses of her mother's lonely girlhood or the "metallic sputter" of the old red motorbike that ends her first marriage, Johnson breaks your heart with the tellingly chosen detail. --Mary Park ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

5-0 out of 5 stars I haven't read a more affecting memoir
If you enjoy the genre of memoir---and especially like reading about the art world, the 1950s and 60s, and the lives of women---you should thoroughly enjoy this book.Joyce Johnson writes with real intimacy---she truly draws the reader into her life---and leaves you at the end wishing for more.Perhaps she will write one more memoir---about her life in publishing.We can all hope!

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I didn't find this book sad or wistful--just honest and affecting.Joyce Johnson is a gifted writer and her choice of words and descriptions always seems perfectly on the mark.I'm just left wishing that her three memoirs were longer---and more plentiful.

5-0 out of 5 stars Portrait of the Artist in an affordable Manhattan
Joyce Johnson pays an eloquent tribute to the two men she married in the fifties and early sixties. Both men, Jim Johnson (who died in a motorcycle crash and left Joyce a widow at 27) and Peter Pinchback were, in a sense, "failed" abstract expressionists whose work never was commercially successful. And both were temperamental men who frankly, sounded impossible to live with. Joyce gave her husbands both financial and emotional support, in addition to working full time as an editor and raising a son alone after her marriage with Pinchback ended. Johnson describes a rich artistic life in what now is a lost and faraway world--a grubby, but affordable Manhattan where even impoverished artists could casually move from the Bowery to the East Village or Soho in search of the perfect space. "In those days it was still possible to be gracefully poor in New York," she writes. From what's been written about the lives of artists like Pollack and deKooning, we know what it was like to be a successful painter in New York in the fifties. Johnson's book is valuable in another way; she chronicles what it was like to be part of the second wave of abstract expressionists. These artists were, by and large, ignored by dealers and critics and their fragile careers were dealt a final blow by the conceptual and Pop art movements.

Johnson writes that she was raisedin a family of women, mostly without men, andthat the emotional absence she experienced in both of her difficult marriages replicated the male absences of her childhood. Ironically, it's Joyce Johnson herself who has achieved the fame and recognition that so eluded both of her husbands. But the loving (and exasperated) portraits she paints of them here show that she is a powerful artist in her own right.

5-0 out of 5 stars a sweetheart of a writer
If you read "Missing Men", no doubt you'll be drawn to Joyce Johnson's other two memoirs, "Minor Characters" and "Door Wide Open".All three books are wonderfully intimate sketches of people and places.Whereas "Minor Characters" and "Door Wide Open" focus on Joyce's friendships with notable personalities within the "Beat Movement"(especially her romantic involvement with Jack Kerouac), "Missing Men" addresses her relationships to her father and her two husbands, artists James Johnson and Peter Pinchbeck.

"Missing Men" is beautifully written.Johnson's economy with language is always worth savoring, tracing scenes which stay with the reader forever--be it gathering apples for a pie with her friends,Jack Kerouac in a sleeping bag in your spare room, or (in this volume) the haunting trip to her deceased husband Peter's pitifully small, loudly-colored house in the country.

Joyce Johnson is simply too good of a writer to miss.Do yourself a favor and go quickly to the nearest bookstore or library to find out for yourself (...or just use that friendly little clicker in your hand.)

4-0 out of 5 stars sadly and sweetly written
Joyce Johnson's "Missing Men" is a wrenchingly sad account of her life, coming of age in 1950s Bohemia. An only child, she details her mother's unhappy journey as an orphan who made a late and unfulfilling marriage and who became a "stage mother," lavishing her daughter with love.

Joyce Johnson broke away from the homelife that stifled her, and gave her heart, several times, to abstract artists: This book is about blankness and absence. Although she writes without excessive self-pity, nevertheless bleakness, sorrow, and longing permeate its pages.There is little here about her successful career, her life in publishing, which might mitigate the wistful tone of her memoir.

5-0 out of 5 stars A Very Dear Book
It's 2am and I meant to be in bed by 10 tonight but couldn't put Missing Men down until it was done. And now it is done, and I'm sad that it is.

Like Minor Characters and In the Night Cafe, two other truly wonderful books, Joyce Johnson writes so personally that the book's end feels like the end of a visit with a dear friend, a friend you see much too rarely. She captures so well that hunger to replay life's moments -- painful and joyous both, over and over like a song, as she put it -- to feel what they have meant, to hear them right, to savor and take them inside you and somehow keep living them long after they're gone.

And she shares the scary lack of fulfilling resolution when the little enlightenments don't simply add up to resolution and love. She doesn't hide her fear of dying alone, and the three books of hers that I have read all bring me home to my own fear of this too. And that's something so few writers have the courage or ability to really share. And that's very honest. And that's something very dear. ... Read more


6. Minor Characters
by Joyce Johnson
 Paperback: Pages (1990-11-01)
list price: US$7.95 -- used & new: US$7.19
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0671727907
Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars
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Product Description
For two years, during the time that On the Road established Jack Kerouac as the spokesman and guiding light of the Beat Generation, Joyce Johnson was his girlfriend. This luminous, lyrical book is the story of that time. "A loving, tender and moving testament."--People.Amazon.com Review
Johnson considers her personal history within thelarger framework of the Beat movement and American society. Memoriesof a conventional Jewish middle-class upbringing and her revoltagainst it are interwoven with the early experiences of people shewould meet later: Jack Kerouac(her boyfriend in the late 1950s), AllenGinsberg, and others are evaluated with perceptiveauthority. Johnson's elegant prose is carefully wrought andthoughtfully measured in a way that Beat literature seldom was. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

3-0 out of 5 stars A woman's view of the beat literature
The female view of the all so male beat generation authors. It is an essential autobiography giving background on this literature of the 1950s. The author writes well. ... Read more


7. Bad Connections
by Joyce Johnson
 Hardcover: 264 Pages (1979-07-30)

Isbn: 0860680932
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars
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Customer Reviews (1)

5-0 out of 5 stars Fast read by an unsung beat writer
Joyce Johnson may best be known as one of Jack Kerouac's girlfriends, but as Kerouac realized, she is also an excellent writer. The writing pulls you into the story and flows at a swift pace. ... Read more


8. Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958
by Jack Kerouac, Joyce Johnson
Paperback: 208 Pages (2001-06-01)
list price: US$15.00 -- used & new: US$0.99
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0141001879
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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Editorial Review

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.Amazon.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 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

5-0 out of 5 stars Great Supplementary Reading to Minor Characters
It really gets interesting (for anyone who has already read Minor Characters) at the point when the letters are most present: starting more or less in Part III (about a quarter way in) commensurate with the publication of On the Road. From there the correspondence tells the bulk of the story. (For those who haven't read Minor Characters, the whole thing could be interesting.) A recapitulation of Minor Characters but with letters that were not cleared for use in that book. In this respect, it is a bit like the extras on a DVD. Great content none the less. But as far as telling her story of her romance with Kerouac, Minor Characters does it in a more literary fashion. Minor Characters was more the voice of Joyce Johnson, and interesting for that reason. She tells the story very well. Hence, I sought out more with this book. In Door Wide Open there are a few more details with respect to her story and considering other people too (in both her and Kerouac's circle), but it's related by her in a more cursory way - this being a bit more like reportage (documentary) in that regard. Still some aspects are slightly more nuanced. The correspondence is definitely worth the price of admission. Her letters are interesting also to read in the context of her age (22/23), to see the development of her own writing voice, the influence of Kerouac, and the arc of an emotional ambivalence more reciprocal than might be immediately obvious. Although she represents and refers to Kerouac's ambivalence more (and in context of its affect upon her), her own ambivalence is also evident to reader, even if not apparent to herself, if only in her reticence and hesitancy and ultimate passivity, all teetering on the fulcrum of her own complicated desire/s. Insightful. There is a peculiar sense in which Ginsberg is positioned as well: If only he had been there. I wonder.

5-0 out of 5 stars Love Is Blind
Joyce Johnson's "Door Wide Open" is a magnificent memoir of the Beat Generation. It focuses on her romance with Jack Kerouac and is a companion piece to her "Minor Characters". Johnson also wrote several other books, including "Missing Men", "Midnight in the Zen Cafe", and, back in 1960, her first novel, "Come and Join the Dance." I'd read "Characters" and most of the major work of the Beats, but it was not until an accidental meeting, through Amazon, that I came to exchange correspondence with a college professor who was writing her P.h.D. thesis. Its subject was Joyce Johnson. She was desperately seeking a copy of "Dance" and the only one I could find for her was going for $300.00. That dynamic MFA is now Dr. Cynthia Bartels. Anyway, that's another story.
Literary tastes change as one gets older. Although I have exhausted the Jack Kerouac canon, and lost most of my interest in him and the other beats, I don't deny Kerouac's genius. How he treated his women, however, is another matter. With the possible exception of the late Carolyn Cassady ("Heartbeat" and "Off The Road") Johnson presents a great deal of insight into Kerouac's character. While must of this has been delved into at length in numerous biographies, and Johnson is incorrect on a few minor points, there is nothing like reading the words of a lover to describe a particular person and time. Think of Anais Nin and Henry Miller, or Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.
I really didn't care for the cavalier way Kerouac treated Johnson, with his egotistical persona and failure to ever cut the cord with his overbearing mother Memere. By the time "On the Road" finally was published in 1957, after drafts which spanned more than 10 years (and preceded "The Scroll") Kerouac had written most of his major ouevre and was very close to being burned out. Twelve years later he would be dead from complications due to alcoholism.
So ultimately, I don't really see how Johnson put up with Kerouac. After one of his absences, she telegrammed him, "Door Wide Open." I'm reminded of the title of the last Kubrick film, "Eyes Wide Shut."
Love is blind.

5-0 out of 5 stars 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!

4-0 out of 5 stars 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...

3-0 out of 5 stars 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. ... Read more


9. Joyce Carol Oates: A Study of the Short Fiction (Twayne's Studies in Short Fiction) (No 57)
by Greg Johnson
Hardcover: 235 Pages (1994-03)
list price: US$25.95
Isbn: 080570857X
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10. Understanding Joyce Carol Oates (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)
by Greg Johnson
Paperback: 236 Pages (1987-09-01)
list price: US$21.95 -- used & new: US$21.95
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Asin: 0872495256
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11. Reading on the Edge: Exiles, Modernities, and Cultural Transformation in Proust, Joyce, and Baldwin
by Cyraina E. Johnson-Roullier
Hardcover: 217 Pages (2000-04)
list price: US$60.50 -- used & new: US$53.01
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Asin: 0791445410
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Product Description
Examines the notion of exile and hybrid cultural identity in Proust, Joyce, and Baldwin, with implications for our understanding of modernism and the modernist canon.

Reading on the Edge explores the notion of multiple cultural identity and exile in the work of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and James Baldwin. Focusing on the cultural politics of modernism through the prism of cultural theory, the book reconceives each author's work while at the same time redrawing modernism's traditionally Eurocentric disciplinary boundaries. The book therefore has wide implications for our understanding of modernism and the modernist canon. ... Read more


12. Wingtrace/the sign of its track: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, May 10-June 22, 1986
by Joyce CutlerShaw
 Unknown Binding: Pages (1986)

Asin: B0006FA8YW
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13. Rough Magic (Rainbow Romance)
by Joyce Johnson
 Hardcover: 160 Pages (1994-04)
list price: US$14.95 -- used & new: US$2.91
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Asin: 0709049234
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Product Description
Lowenna thought it safe to return to the tranquil peace of her native Cornwall. After all, Jake Courtenay, the man who had shattered her girlhood, was on the other side of the Atlantic. But the past returns to haunt her when she discovers that the yacht in Polcarrow Bay belongs to Jake. ... Read more


14. Writings of The Ages
by Susan C. Barto, Chris Bennett, Bill Davis, Gary Drury, Peter Egypt, Lydia Guillot, Cecilia G. Haupt, Joyce Johnson, Richard E. Zwez, Linda Amos
Digital: 81 Pages (2004-11-22)
list price: US$4.99 -- used & new: US$4.99
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Asin: B0006SPFC4
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15. Drurys Gazette Issue One 2004
by Chris Bennett, Gary Drury, Peter Egypt, Cecilia G. Haupt, Joyce Johnson, Richard E. Zwez, Susan C. Barto
Digital: 13 Pages (2004-09-08)
list price: US$5.99 -- used & new: US$5.99
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Asin: B0006M9X96
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16. Drurys Gazette Issue Five 2005
by Larry Blazek, Gary Drury, Ken Gillespie, Carol Hamilton, Cecilia Haupt, Shelia Roark, Tanya Lee Lyles, Arturo McCarthy, Angie Monnens, Lydia M. Guillot, Joyce Johnson, Jane Aaron Vander Wahl, Richard Zwez, Frank Anthony
Digital: 11 Pages (2005-12-15)
list price: US$5.99 -- used & new: US$5.99
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: B000EDWKA6
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17. Drurys Gazette Issue Two 2005
by Larry Blazek, Gary Drury, Ken Gillespie, Carol Hamilton, Cecilia Haupt, Shelia Roark, Tanya Lee Lyles, Arturo McCarthy, Angie Monnens, Lydia M. Guillot, Joyce Johnson, Jane Aaron Vander Wahl, Richard Zwez, Frank Anthony
Digital: 22 Pages (2005-04-21)
list price: US$5.99 -- used & new: US$5.99
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Asin: B0009HM1J2
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18. Techniques in Clinical Nursing (4th Edition)
by Barbara Kozier, Glenora Erb, Kathleen Blais, JoyceYoung Johnson, Jean Smith Temple
Paperback: 1038 Pages (1992-12-31)
list price: US$76.67 -- used & new: US$15.00
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: 0805359508
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Editorial Review

Product Description
Florida International University, Miami. New edition of a Brandon/Hill Nursing List first purchase selection. Nursing procedures textbook for students and practitioners. Abundant color and half-tone illustrations. DNLM: Nursing Process. ... Read more


19. Forever In My Heart (Linford Romance Library)
by Joyce Johnson
 Paperback: 296 Pages (2007-11-30)
list price: US$20.99 -- used & new: US$20.59
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Asin: 1846179874
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20. Drurys Gazette Issue One 2006
by Larry Blazek, Gary Drury, Ken Gillespie, Carol Hamilton, Cecilia Haupt, Shelia Roark, Tanya Lee Lyles, Arturo McCarthy, Angie Monnens, Lydia M. Guillot, Joyce Johnson, Jane Aaron Vander Wahl, Richard Zwez, Frank Anthony
Digital: 19 Pages (2006-02-24)
list price: US$5.99 -- used & new: US$5.99
(price subject to change: see help)
Asin: B000EQH2M4
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