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

By Joyce Johnson and Jack Kerouac

Book Overview

A "wonderful" (The New York Times Book Review) and unique collection of love letters between Joyce Johnson and Jack Kerouac

"A touching commentary not only on the Beat Generation but on what it's like to be a young woman who loves a gifted, troubled guy with other things--besides love--on his mind."--Elle

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.

Door Wide Open, containing the many letters the two of them wrote to each other, reveals a surprisingly tender side of Kerouac. It also shares a vivid and unusual perspective on 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 literature's most fascinating and enigmatic figures.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0141001879
• ISBN13: 9780141001876
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

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!

A love affair in letters

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

A "must" for Jack Kerouac fans & beat-generation enthusiasts

Door Wide Open is a gathering of love letters between two major figures of the Beat Generation presents works written between 1957-58, exchanged in the course of an on-off relationship across countries. A side of Kerouac's personality not previously viewed is observed in the course of these letters.

Voyeurs and Artists delight

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.

Another Milestone for Joyce Johnson

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.