Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters 1957-1958.
Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnson (with Introduction and Commentary
by Joyce Johnson)
Viking/
Penguin Putnam, Inc, 375 Hudson St.
New York, New York 10014
ISBN: 0-670-89040-5
$24.95,
182 pgs.
In her Beat Generation memoir, "Minor Characters," Joyce Johnson
writes "If time were like a passage of music, you could keep going back to
it till you got it right."
Johnson returns again to the subject of her youth in New York's
Beat epicenter with "Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters
1957-1958," a collection of letters written between Johnson (then Joyce
Glassman) and the illustrious Jack Kerouac during their brief relationshipin the late 1950's. Johnson, author of "Come and Join the Dance" and "In
th Night Cafe", details, in the books introduction, the rise and fall of
their relationship, all at a time when Kerouac was bursting onto the
literary scene with the phenomenal success of "On The Road."
Johnson's relationship with Kerouac during this time was largely
long-distance, with Kerouac writing from such diverse locales as San
Francisco and Mexico, while Johnson remained in the cultural and literary
world of New York. At times the letters are tense with conflict. They
also chronical Kerouac's decent into depression and alcoholism, both
fostered by his fame and success.
In addition, the letters give us insight into the life of
Johnson, who was herself emerging as a writer at the time. The reader
witnesses Johnson's struggle with the conflict between the idea of
woman-as-writer and 1950's female expectations, despite the apparent
freedom the Beat lifestyle. In this, the letters offer evidence of the
disparity between the myth and reality of the Beat experience. For anyone
one interested in Beat generation writers, male or female, this book is
definately worth reading.