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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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
From Publishers Weekly
Best known for her chronicles of the beats, Minor Characters and Door Wide Open (with Jack Kerouac), Johnson returns to those times as she retells the story of her life with-and without-the men who mattered most to her, including the grandfather for whom she was named, who committed suicide before she was born. "[M]y life has shaped itself around absences," she writes, "first by happenstance; ultimately, perhaps, by choice." These absences form the structure of this fine memoir. The first section covers Johnson's early years as a child actress and her mother's intense desire for her to make something of herself. It ends with her mother, who goes on to become her "negative muse," poisoning her relationship with her father when she is 12. The second section focuses on Johnson's brief but intense relationship with her first husband, the painter James Johnson, whose early death left her a widow at 27. He left his mark in many ways-from an appreciation that "the difference between life and death... could hang on a few inches" to her last name. Finally, Johnson dissects her short-lived second marriage to artist Peter Pinchbeck and her growing awakening to her own self-worth. Shortly before she leaves him, Johnson thinks, "How was it that I could be important enough to have my name in Newsweek, while at home I was little more than a housemaid?" Her deceptively simple prose cuts through the past, where "memories settled on stuff like dust." Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
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
From Publishers Weekly
Best known for her chronicles of the beats, Minor Characters and Door Wide Open (with Jack Kerouac), Johnson returns to those times as she retells the story of her life with-and without-the men who mattered most to her, including the grandfather for whom she was named, who committed suicide before she was born. "[M]y life has shaped itself around absences," she writes, "first by happenstance; ultimately, perhaps, by choice." These absences form the structure of this fine memoir. The first section covers Johnson's early years as a child actress and her mother's intense desire for her to make something of herself. It ends with her mother, who goes on to become her "negative muse," poisoning her relationship with her father when she is 12. The second section focuses on Johnson's brief but intense relationship with her first husband, the painter James Johnson, whose early death left her a widow at 27. He left his mark in many ways-from an appreciation that "the difference between life and death... could hang on a few inches" to her last name. Finally, Johnson dissects her short-lived second marriage to artist Peter Pinchbeck and her growing awakening to her own self-worth. Shortly before she leaves him, Johnson thinks, "How was it that I could be important enough to have my name in Newsweek, while at home I was little more than a housemaid?" Her deceptively simple prose cuts through the past, where "memories settled on stuff like dust." Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
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Inside This Book Citations: This book cites 11 books Explore: Citations | Concordance | Text Stats Key Phrases - CAPs: New York, Mme Piscator, Aunt Anna, Greene Street, Chrystie Street (more) Browse Sample Pages: Front Cover | Copyright | E |