Customer Reviews

Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958

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In Doors Wide Open, Joyce Johnson has accomplished the seemingly impossible--expanded both historically and emotionally on her award-winning memoir, Minor Characters, illuminating with even more candor and care her relationship with Jack Kerouac. We readers are the beneficiaries of both her legal freedom and personal willingness to continue her story. With so much dubious scholarship and questionable intention to be found in books on Kerouac and the beats, from an assortment of writers claiming to be "insiders," Johnson provides a voice both vulnerable and true as she returns to a time and place she remembers perhaps as well as anyone still living. In her correspondence with Kerouac at a pivotal point in both of their lives, we bear witness to the twin agonies of genius and celebrity, and glimpse through a lens of most tender intimacy the very real people behind the mythology that so swiftly became the beat movement. Highly recommended.

Almost 30 years after his premature death, we are just beginning to see Jack Kerouac objectively as an artist. Joyce Johnson's collection of letters shows a side of Kerouac more like Big Sur than On The Road--he's not so much the travelling hipster as the thoughtful artist. Kerouac never quite got to the point in his artistic development where he pleased himself with his own writing. He was always ambitious and always frustrated with words. He was hammering out a new style of prose, but much of his audience seemed unaware of his influences. There were too many readers out there who just wanted to be beatniks and not enough who had read Thomas Wolfe and Theodore Dreiser and the others who inspired On The Road.

The Selected Letters of Jack Kerouac as edited by Ann Charters now take up two volumes. I have not compared those two books with the proof I read of Doors Wide Open, and I do not know whether there is any overlap, but I enjoyed Joyce Johnson's collection. There are not enough female voices among what we call the Beat Generation, but hers is a complement to Kerouac. I think their relationship inspired him to open up in ways he could not to others. This is a great addition to Johnson's earlier memoir, Minor Characters, which was published more than ten years ago. It is good to have the Kerouac letters, but it is a fine thing to see this woman come out of the shadows and find her own voice after all these years.

When can we expect Joyce Johnson's first novel?

If you ever felt disconnected to yourself - this is a great read. I was also the little girl who wanted to snoop in everyone's closets, and yes - read your diary, so this book held my fancy. It is a wonderful book about a woman in the 1950's (who could have been in the 1990's) who was struggling to BE in New York City. She was struggling to be a writer, a friend an artist and herself. I found Joyce Johnson's voice honest and sensitive and this book made me want to go read her novels - not Jack Kerouac. If you have ever loved anyone you suspected was just too cool for you, this book will also be meaningful, you see how that cool person may be suffering their own provate torments as Jack was.

For anyone interested in the lives behind the novels and poems of the Beats, Joyce Johnson offers a priceless glimpse at the realities of a world most of us can only imagine. Delineating a love affair that was short but tremendously influential on both of them, Johnson reveals something of her own personal growth during a time when being a young woman on her own was an act of rebellion in itself, as well as the impact of sudden fame and fortune on Jack Kerouac's already fragile psyche. Although the insensitivity to Johnson that shows through in Kerouac's letters to her will come as no surprise to those who are already familiar with his personality, his letters do feature a rare directness with one who knew him well. If his carelessness with money and women and his blind devotion to his mother remain as striking as ever, both his letters and Johnson's interpretation of them give us something of a better understanding of how these characteristics came into being.

Along the way, there are images aplenty of the stage the affair played out on: beatnik parties, Village pubs and restaurants, jazz concerts, and New York suburbs back when they were distinguishable from the city itself. Other important figures, notably Allen Ginsberg, appear throughout the text in candid shots we would never find in their own work. Johnson discusses them all in the style of one who knew them personally. For this reason among others, this book is not a very good starting point for learning about the Beat Generation, but it is an excellent complimentary piece for anyone who already has some familiarity with and interest in that era.

Joyce Johnson's reminisence of her love affair with Jack Kerouac is a bittersweet tale of her passion for Kerouac, the insecurities involving the relationship, the interaction with many of the beat generation characters, such as Allen Ginsberg, the saga of the Orlovsky brothers, the end of Elise Cowen often mentioned in beatnik reviews. Particularly touching is her description of the last time she saw her lover and his coming back into her life and memories, through the package of letters delivered by Kerouac's estate.

Through this book we get to know more about Kerouac the man, the son, the struggling writer and the fascination of a young woman living alone in New York in love with the persona and gloomy side of the writer. It is highly recommendable

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.

This book was plesure to read simply because of Joyce Johnson's fine writing which fills in the spaces between letters.The writing is clear, poignant and nicely focused. There really wasn't a great depth to her relationship with Kerouac but that might be said of most of Kerouac's relationships. What is interesting here is the contrast in two lifestyles and how Joyce's perspective changed as a result of her relationship with Kerouac and the New York beat scene. It's interesting to see the quality of her writing evolve in her letters to Jack. This book takes one back into a space and time where it is easy to see how both writers were living beyond the margins-- before it became a cliche.

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...

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

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.