The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac

by Joyce Johnson

Overview

A groundbreaking portrait of Kerouac as a young artist—from the award-winning author of Minor Characters

In The Voice is All, Joyce Johnson, author of her classic memoir, Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac, brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities.  Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac’s French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider’s vision of America, she  tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road, followed by Visions of Cody. By illuminating Kerouac’s early choice to sacrifice everything to his work, The Voice Is All deals with him on his own terms and puts the tragic contradictions of his nature and his complex relationships into perspective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101601068
Publisher:	Temple Publications International, Inc.
Publication date:	09/13/2012
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	512
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Joyce Johnson’s books include the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Minor Characters, Missing Men, Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957–1958 (with Jack Kerouac), and In the Night Café. She has written for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction xvii

Part 1 Franco-American Ghosts

The Lost Brother 3

Jean-Louis Kerouac 14

Part 2 A Half-American Boyhood

La Salle de Mort 27

A Catholic Education 34

Pawtucketville 43

Football Hero 51

First Love 61

Part 3 An Uprooting

Manhattan 71

The Summer of Sebastian 83

Columbia 91

The Escape 105

Part 4 The War

At Sea 123

Edie Parker 138

Part 5 The Libertine Circle

The Season of Lucien 155

Birth of a Symbolist 170

Apartment 51 184

Benzedrine Weekends 199

A Father's Death 209

Part 6 Postwar

Enter Neal Cassady 219

The Road 236

Reaching California 247

Ozone Park 256

Part 7 "White Ambitions"

The Conquest of Manhattan 269

The Summer of Visions and Parties 275

Enter John Clellon Holmes 285

"The Rudeness of Being" 297

Part 8 "Rain and Rivers"

"Whither Goest Thou in Thy Shiny Car at Night?" 309

A Change in Luck 320

Continental Divide 332

The Edge of Success 344

The French Canadian Older Brother 356

Part 9 The "Rush of Truth"

The Unwritable Road Novel 369

The Girl with the Innocent and Pure Eyes 375

"The Voice Is All" 380

The Road Opens Up 392

Deep Form 404

Part 10 Interior Music

Visions of Neal 413

Tranced Fixations 417

Rêves 430

Acknowledgments 437

Notes 439

Index 473

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for The Voice Is All

“Spectacular…definitely the Kerouac book for our time…traces the birth of a literary genius and dispels many of the Kerouac myths: that he wrote from memory, not the imagination, and that he wrote spontaneously and without revising…The Voice is All has a lot going for it, including the author’s own confidence-inspiring voice that plunges readers into the maelstrom of Kerouac’s intensely creative and yet intensely self-destructive life, and then pulls readers back and provides much needed detachment…Johnson knows how to create suspense and weave the complex lives of her characters into a narrative that rumbles along…her own voice is eloquent, her prose clear and crisp.” —Jonah Raskin, The San Francisco Chronicle

“A major new biography that traces the gradual emergence of the voice that came to define Kerouac’s distinctive style of autobiographical fiction…Johnson redirects our focus to Kerouac’s writing – an aspect that has been overshadowed by his legend…she suggests his internal struggle to navigate his mixed ethnic identity gave his prose a hard-earned depth and directness…By forcing us to reckon with Kerouac as a Franco-American author, Johnson has reminded us of the immense and often unseen burden of forging a life on the margins of two cultures – even for someone as emblematically American as Kerouac.” —Lauren Du Graf, thedailybeast.com

“In The Voice is All, Johnson brilliantly and intimately gets beyond the Kerouac legend to the solitary soul of the man...she has infused Kerouac’s work with excitement, struggle, desperation, and love.” —Royal Young, Interviewmagazine.com

“Johnson has wisely chosen to emphasize the part of Kerouac’s life all but lost in the Kerouac legend: Behind the coast-to-coast craziness, the drug- and booze-inspired flights of mysticism, the Benzedrine-fueled writing sprees, a very serious writer was at work.” —Bill Marvel, The Dallas Morning News

“An exemplary biography of the Beat icon and his development as a writer…Johnson [turns] a laser-sharp focus on Kerouac’s evolving ideas about language, fiction vs. truth and the role of the writer in his time…there’s plenty of life in these pages to fascinate casual readers, and Johnson is a sensitive but admirably objective biographer. A triumph of scholarship.” – Kirkus Reviews

“An intimate of Kerouac who has chronicled his life and the beat culture, Johnson brings an insider’s perspective to this insightful study of how Kerouac found his literary voice…Johnson excels in her colorful, candid assessment of this evolution of this voice – up through the genesis of On the Road – the point where most other appraisals of Kerouac begin.” – Publishers Weekly

"This is quite simply the best book about Kerouac and one of the best accounts of any writer's apprenticeship that I have read. And it should generate a serious reconsideration of Kerouac as a classical, because hyphenated, American writer, one struggling to synthesize a doubled language, culture, and class. It's also a terrific read, a windstorm of a story." —Russell Banks

“Joyce Johnson brings her immense narrative gifts to this portrait of Jack Kerouac. In these pages, there is an intimacy of knowledge which renders previous accounts of Kerouac's life null and void — and it's about time! This is an indispensably honest book about an inimitable American writer, composed by an inimitable American writer.” —Howard Norman

“With The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson has vaulted from memoir to biography, clearing every hurdle with a portrait of young Jack Kerouac that is as beautifully written as and even more enlightening than her classic Minor Characters. She illuminates the period, brings nuance and new information to twice-told tales, and recasts Kerouac from a beat to a writer. This is the way literary biography ought to be done and rarely is: a revelation.” —Gary Giddins

“Only another writer could have given us this extraordinary portrait of a major artist's challenging apprenticeship and triumphant breakthrough into a new literary style and narrative form. Johnson takes us deep within Kerouac's creative process and tender, troubled psyche; to read The Voice Is All is at once exhilarating and heartbreaking. This is the definitive work on Kerouac, alive on every page; it is also yet another stunning achievement for Johnson herself, one of our most gifted, versatile and powerful writers.” —Ann Douglas

“Joyce Johnson’s knowing and intimate The Voice Is All delivers the most ambitious of biographical results. She restores dignity and intellect to her subject, and gives her readers access to the poignant and complex young man behind all of that charismatic beat prose.” —Brad Gooch

“With eloquence and a wealth of detail, Joyce Johnson chronicles Kerouac's false starts, switchbacks, and re-tunings on his path to a fiction of sheer energy. This remarkable portrait of his early years gives a close view of the intense process of one writer's development.” —Joan Silber

“This biography of Jack Kerouac, the product of a lifetime of sifting truth from myth and ruminating about the subject, is arguably her best book. There is a maturity, wisdom and compassion here that puts to shame most literary biographies.” — Phillip Lopate

“We think of Kerouac as an overnight sensation, but Johnson tells a deeper and more surprising story. Guided by memory of youthful intimacy with her subject and equipped with thorough knowledge of his works and access to newly opened archives, she strips away myth to give us a nuanced, engrossing biography – an indelible account of a hardworking young man’s inspiring effort to become a great writer.” —Honor Moore

Editorial Reviews

An intense and wonderful exploration into the mind of Jack Kerouac, the hard territory and brutal experiences that produced him and his own fierce determination to become a writer….Johnson succeeds in blowing apart many of the stereotypes of Kerouac as an author and as a man.” —Dylan Foley, Chicago Tribune

                                                              

“Spectacular…definitely the Kerouac book for our time…traces the birth of a literary genius and dispels many of the Kerouac myths: that he wrote from memory, not the imagination, and that he wrote spontaneously and without revising…Johnson knows how to create suspense and weave the complex lives of her characters into a narrative that rumbles along…her own voice is eloquent, her prose clear and crisp.” —Jonah Raskin, San Francisco Chronicle

                                                         

“A major new biography that traces the gradual emergence of the voice that came to define Kerouac’s distinctive style of autobiographical fiction…Johnson redirects our focus to Kerouac’s writing – an aspect that has been overshadowed by his legend.” —Lauren Du Graf, The Daily Beast

                                                             

“Johnson has wisely chosen to emphasize the part of Kerouac’s life all but lost in the Kerouac legend: Behind the coast-to-coast craziness, the drug- and booze-inspired flights of mysticism, the Benzedrine-fueled writing sprees, a very serious writer was at work.” —Bill Marvel, The Dallas Morning News

                                                              

“[A] remarkable new biography…the final section of this book take on the urgency of a thriller reaching its climax. So closely does Johnson track Kerouac’s evolution as a writer that one senses a breakthrough right around the corner.” —John Freeman, Barnes and Noble review

                                                                      

“In The Voice is All, Johnson brilliantly and intimately gets beyond the Kerouac legend to the solitary soul of the man...she has infused Kerouac’s work with excitement, struggle, desperation, and love.” —Royal Young, Interviewmagazine.com

                                                               

“Johnson, an award-winning memoirist in her own right, draws from her relationship with Kerouac, as well as Kerouac’s private papers, for an unromanticized (but deeply personal) take on a man whose conflicted, roving essence continues to resonate.” —Megan O’Grady, vogue.com

                                                                 

“A magnificent bildungsroman biography…Johnson has poured herself into the book in the way artists to works of the imagination…more rewarding than Johnson’s inside storytelling are her insights into Kerouac’s ambitions as a writer.” —Mindy Aloff, The Virginia Quarterly Review

                                                                  

“Johnson proves herself to be a rigorous, knowledgeable, and penetrating biographer in this engrossing portrait of Kerouac as a divided soul…she offers exceptionally lucid coverage of his depression, alcoholism, and every significant relationship in his surging life…most valuable is Johnson’s discerning analysis of what Kerouac hoped to achieve in his by-turns exalted and anguished transmutation of experience into literature.” —Donna Seaman, ALA Booklist

                                                                          

“Johnson brings an outsider’s perspective to this insightful study of how Kerouac found his voice as a writer…[she] excels in her colorful, candid assessment of the evolution of [Kerouac’s] voice.” —Publishers Weekly

                                                                             

“A triumph of scholarship…an exemplary biography of the Beat icon and his development as a writer…[Johnson] turns a laser-sharp focus on Kerouac’s evolving ideas about language, fiction vs. truth and the role of the writer in his time…Johnson is a sensitive but admirably objective biographer.” —Kirkus Reviews

                                                                              

“Johnson breaks new ground in this well-written account of Kerouac’s early life…the portrait of Kerouac that emerges is one of a complicated individual, full of contradictions, who, above all else, was dedicated to his art…essential reading for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of Kerouac’s life and work.” —Library Journal

From the Publisher

In Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir and Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957–1958, Johnson recounts her love affair with the author of On the Road (1957). Now, in this well-documented biography, she focuses on Kerouac's first 30 years, analyzing the impact his French-Canadian heritage and his first language, Joual, had on his life and work. Drawing on Kerouac material in the New York Public Library's Berg Collection, Johnson provides fresh insights into his early literary influences and his friendships with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, John Clellon Holmes, and, especially, Neal Cassady. She is particularly good at exploring the psychology of Kerouac's relationship with women and the effect of his attachment to his mother on those relationships. The portrait of Kerouac that emerges is one of a complicated individual, full of contradictions, who, above all else, was dedicated to his art. VERDICT Johnson breaks new ground in this well-written account of Kerouac's early life. She ends in 1951 with the stylistic breakthrough that eventually would lead to the experimental prose of Visions of Cody, written then but not published in its entirety until 1972. Her book is essential reading for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of Kerouac's life and work.—William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

Library Journal

An exemplary biography of the Beat icon and his development as a writer. With unprecedented access to the New York Public Library's extensive Berg Collection of Kerouac artifacts, Johnson (Missing Men, 2005, etc.) tells the familiar story of the rise of the reluctant "king of the Beats" through the unfamiliar lens of his notebooks, manuscripts and correspondence with family, friends, lovers, editors and writers. The collection was unavailable to scholars for three decades, and access to it is still tightly controlled by the Kerouac estate. Johnson uses her opportunity as a pioneer in this new era of Kerouac scholarship to turn a laser-sharp focus on Kerouac's evolving ideas about language, fiction vs. truth and the role of the writer in his time. She ends her chronology in late 1951, as Kerouac found the voice and method he'd employ for the rest of his brief career while seeking a publisher for On the Road and working on the novel he considered his masterpiece, Visions of Cody. While still detailing the chaotic and occasionally tragic events of the writer's life--from mill-town football hero to multiply divorced dipsomaniac mama's boy/cult idol--Johnson's focus allows her to trace a trajectory of success rather than follow his painfully familiar decline into alcoholism and premature death. "[T]o me," she writes, "what is important is Jack's triumph in arriving at the voice that matched his vision." Of perhaps most interest was her discovery of just how important his French-Canadian heritage was to Kerouac's sense of identity. He considered its earthy patois his native language and seems to have translated his thoughts from it into the muscular English with which he's associated. There's plenty of life in these pages to fascinate casual readers, and Johnson is a sensitive but admirably objective biographer. A triumph of scholarship.

Kirkus Reviews