Personal life
The way Johnson was brought up was quite unconventional and different from other girls her age in the 1940s and 1950s. She grew up most her life witnessing the women in her life face many struggles in life trying to find purpose. An example would be her mother who at 19 was continually moving from one place to another in her family's efforts to help her gain better marital prospects. As she said in the County College of Morris's Legacy Project Forum on Women of the Beat Generation being exposed to many various situations growing up, she believes that that is the reason why she learned not to be dependent on anyone. Just like her mother, she went to an all-girls high school and women's college. At 13, she began spending time in"I have to say that one of the rare men who very actively encouraged me in my writing was Jack Kerouac"Among the reasons why it was a significant phase for Johnson is through her above statement in which she acknowledges the fact that it was her relationship with Kerouac that led her to have her writing career success because he supported her to venture out in the literature. During her relationship with Kerouac, she realised that men simply saw women as material for their writing, and as sexual objects, not as individuals. Johnson believes this realization of the Beat women paved the way for women's liberation of that time, sparking the urge for them to be more than just minor characters. After her break up with Jack Kerouac, she was married briefly to abstract painter James Johnson, who was killed in a motorcycle accident. From her second marriage to painter Peter Pinchbeck, which ended in divorce, came her son,
Career
Most of Johnson's novels highlighted an issue about women's status in society and their limitation of experience because of their gender as a woman. The woman was perceived as misfits, rebels and sinful creatures who could not be controlled. Thus, these issues have driven Johnson to produce her debut novel ''Come and Join the Dance'' in 1962. The book was published before theStyle of Writing
Non-fiction
In general, the memoirs by Joyce Johnson comprise insights regarding her personal experience, memories, and identity. She had written four memoirs which are ''Minor Characters'', ''Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters'', ''Missing Men: A Memoir'' and ''The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac'' that were published in 1983, 2000, 2004 and 2012 respectively. It can be seen that her life experiences as a female writer and the relationship with Jack Kerouac have been written in these memoirs. With regards to the style of writing, Joyce Johnson had her own way to express her thoughts in writing. It can be seen that she is meticulous in her work because she wants to give the best reading experience to the readers. Joyce Johnson's main concern in the process of writing is the structure rather than the theme in her literary works. This means that she needs a proper plan to organise the ideas in her works. Thus, her style of writing varies from the other Beat writers who are commonly associated with the notion of spontaneous writing. Besides that, Joyce Johnson used descriptive and narrative styles to write about her life stories which include characters, settings and conflicts. These writing styles can be regarded as the most effective way for her to describe the events in details based on her personal experience. She had to be selective in choosing particular events to be included in her literary work. This can be seen in the interview with Nancy Grace:For example, I could have put in everything that happened to me during the years that I was writing about, but there was a lot of stuff I simply left out because I wanted to have a focus. For example, the fact that when I was a child I was in the theater. Well, that was very interesting, but it would have taken me away from what I was really writing about, so I didn't put that material inBased on this interview, it can be inferred that writing a memoir is not an easy task because the writer had to recall specific events to avoid any fabrication. It illustrates that Joyce Johnson wants her readers to experience her life and comprehend the message through her writing. Therefore, this kind of exposure helps to fashion their understanding regarding her life as a female writer and Beat Movement in the twentieth century.
Fiction
Apart from memoirs and autobiographies, Joyce Johnson also wrote fiction novels. Her writing debut in 1962, ''Come and Join the Dance'' is a fiction written a year earlier before her encounter with Kerouac. The storyline wraps up in the hustle and chaos of the Beat movement in 1955, where it highlights the story of a rebellious young female college student who possesses the qualities most Beat men have- to be adventurous, carefree and sexually active. Despite it challenges the orthodox femininity ideas of that time, Johnson affirms that she wrote based on real situations that the women she knew were living life, far from conforming to their gender expectations. In an interview with Nancy Grace in May 1999, Johnson admitted that Andre Gide's ''The Counterfeiters'' has been a great influence for her to write that kind of story. She deemed to be constantly worried about writing it at the beginning.Oh, I wrote that novel with so much uncertainty I could hardly believe I was actually writing one. I was so scared. And also, I was quite nervous. I was quite aware that I was writing about things that a nice, young lady should not write about. If you wrote about those things people would think you had experienced them yourself — that my parents would read it and be shocked. And various people did read it and were shocked. Reviewers were shocked!Sixteen years later, Johnson produced her second fiction novel in 1978, ''Bad Connections'' and further wrote another fiction title, ''In the Night Cafe'' (1987). Both novels capture the bohemian culture in the 1960s with more highlights on the emotions of the female characters in facing struggles as Beat women. According to Johnson in the same interview, she considered ''In the Night Cafe'' as her best book and stated how reading Henry James's novels has influenced her to write fiction.
Influences
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnsons dated. They exchanged love letters. These are the only facts about their relationship.Beat Movement
Living in the heart of the 1950s'The role of an observer has its advantages. You may play as much a part in the group as you wish, but when you are drawn in a little too tightly, you can always say 'Well after all, I'm just an observer,' and step back into safety againJoyce was concerned with women's movement during the time and was glad that her works received recognition as a woman author of Beat Generation.
Issues in Johnson's Writing
Feminism
Although Johnson is recognized for establishing strong literary connections, her works should be acknowledged as well for having an even grander impact. All of her literary works play a role in dispelling the silence that is commonly attributed to the female character in post-war literature. Being one of the few women that managed to find her way to the top of the Beat Movement, Johnson uses this opportunity as a medium in sharing her experiences living as a woman who drifted away from reaching the path of conventionality in her literary works.I would make it my business to write about young women quite different from the ones portrayed on the pages of the New Yorker. I would write about furnished rooms and sex.Three of her novels, ''Come and Join the Dance'', ''Bad Connections'', and ''In the Night Café'' portrayed a similar theme which was cultural and gender discourses. These novels successfully displayed the adventure of the middle-class white women particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. The issue on feminism is heavily touched on all of her three novels particularly on Bad Connections, published in 1978. It is interesting to note that although the novel has been out of prints for many years and lacking a thorough analysis from academicians, the context of the story in the novel offers valued definition on the zeitgeist of the 1950s and 1960s as well as the thinking of one of the women who revolved around the Beat Movement. As Johnson's writings are set in the context of American counterculture, where culture with values and norms of behaviour contrast from those of conventional society, they follow the pattern where the female protagonist is set to face with an amount number of difficulties in order to acquire the liberty of freeing herself from the life that traditionally is laid out for women.
That is, the novel instantiates rules, customs, and convictions of the Beat generation for women, but critiques them by reversing the status of the sexes, even while preserving the binary, hierarchic structure of the gender system.Her semi-fictional novels also shared a similar similarity where they feature a female bohemian as the main character who is searching what is meant to be free even after gaining one. They also highlighted the controversial situation faced by women in that era living within heavy influence of the Beat Generation. Besides, her three earliest novels have strong links with Johnson's own years of experiences after her first contact with the Beats.
These three novels form a trilogy spanning Johnson's life in hipster and hippie New York and critique Beat as well as sixties countercultures and discourses.By taking that into consideration, her portrayal of women in her writings opens a new way of looking at how a woman, infused with the ideas of this movement, represents a female protagonist in large part on the margin of the rapidly developing American society. It is also interesting to note that Johnson's point of view on life was without doubt influenced by Kerouac and the Beats in relation to their shared attitudes towards women. By this, it shows how Johnson decides to foreground a woman and ultimately parted away from the uniform and shallow depiction of women by male Beat writers. Despite having most of non-fiction works that narrate her experiences as one of the scarce women within the Beat Generation and her relationship with Kerouac, her fictions seem to be more of a proto-feminist reaction to the patriarchal belief and sexist construction of women. Her protagonists not only acted as reconfiguration of the dominant Beat discourse, they also arbitrated in the reactionary Beat culture in addition to the formation of culture of female inferiority and marginality. In other words, her writings could be viewed as counter responses of women towards the dominance of male writers within the Beat Movement. She successfully showcased the misperceptions and conflicts surrounding the white, middle-class female protagonist in a rigid patriarchal society.
Joyce Johnson relationship with Jack Kerouac
It all started with a blind date set up by a poet author of Howl, Allen Ginsberg who was also a Beat alumni.Hello. I'm Jack. Allen tells me you're very nice. Would you like to come down to Howard Johnson's on Eighth Street? I'll be sitting at the counter.Joyce Johnson who was 21 years old met Jack Kerouac, 13 years old older than her. Thus, began a relationship that lasted nearly two years. Their relationship started due to their shared passion for writing and did not last long as Johnson claimed that Kerouac was a mess when it came to relationships with women. During those days, Johnson was still struggling with her first novel which is Come and Join the Dance. Moreover, Kerouac was a womanizer where he always changed his partner and also possessed a bad habit of drinking. One of the major reasons that caused their relationship to end was his mother, Gabrielle L'Evesque Kerouac. She was very suspicious of all of his friends and totally isolated him from any relationship because she wanted him to stay faithful to her without any competition from other women. Kerouac and his mother were too involved with each other as there were no secrets between them regarding their private life. Nevertheless, Johnson captures this period of her relationship in her memoir ''Minor Characters'' in 1983 which then boosts her career as a writer. In one of her interviews, Johnson said that she never imagined herself writing non-fiction things. However, ''Minor Characters'' makes her feel satisfied to write something that comes directly from life which was totally different from writing fiction stories. Undoubtedly, real-life does have a lot of surprise and unpredictability in it. By writing the memoir, Johnson wanted to discover and make sense of the events that occur during her past days. Unfortunately, her decision to include her past relationship life with Kerouac in ''Minor Characters'' brings some issues when people started to claim her milking Kerouac's popularity for her own sake. Johnson's role as a former girlfriend of a popular author has overshadowed her own works although she was an accomplished writer herself.
In a way it has been a curse. Because people cannot see me as a writer apart from my relationship to that material. It has been immensely frustrating. What has been frustrating to me is that the people who know my work seem to remember it only in the context of my writing about Jack.''Minor Characters'' is a mixture of many different subjects such as the Beats Generation and those women who hope to escape from society's biases. Although Kerouac was the major character in the story as in his contribution to the young American generation, the memoir is indeed about the sadness of a so-called minor character who wants to become a major one. After all, it is a memoir of herself that started with her story growing up in the Upper West Side. Johnson stated that she just suddenly thought that she wanted to write about those who had not survived. Yet, her work still became the sidelines of the beat movement as well as the other female writers. Joyce Johnson's role in Beat history is too often viewed simply as that of Jack Kerouac's girlfriend. To make it worse, in her most recent book, ''The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac'', there was an expectation that she would once again write something focusing on her two years relationship with Kerouac. Nonetheless, she has actually chosen to produce a fifty years biography of him from a different angle in comparison to other biographers. With their short time of intimate relationship, Johnson used all her knowledge about Kerouac to shape her point of view when she was writing ''The Voice Is All''. She knew about her subject better compared to other authors because she spent most of her time with Kerouac during his rising moment in life. Johnson's reputation as a writer is often overshadowed by the mystique surrounding Kerouac. The Kerouac biographer Ellis Amburn falsely alleges that Johnson and
Bibliography
* (as Joyce Glassman) * * * * * * *References
External links
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Joyce 1935 births Living people 20th-century American memoirists Jewish American novelists 20th-century American novelists American women short story writers American short story writers Barnard College alumni Beat Generation writers Columbia University faculty Jack Kerouac New York University faculty O. Henry Award winners People from the Upper West Side Writers from Manhattan American women novelists American women memoirists 20th-century American women writers Novelists from New York (state)