The Voice Is All The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac

by Johnson, Joyce

• ISBN13: 9780670025107
• ISBN10: 0670025100
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-13
• Publisher: Viking Adult

Summary

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 Alldeals with him on his own terms and puts the tragic contradictions of his nature and his complex relationships into perspective.

Author Biography

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	p. xvii
Franco-American Ghosts
The Lost Brother	p. 3
Jean-Louis Kerouac	p. 14
A Half-American Boyhood
La Salle de Mort	p. 27
A Catholic Education	p. 34
Pawtucketville	p. 43
Football Hero	p. 51
First Love	p. 61
An Uprooting
Manhattan	p. 71
The Summer of Sebastian	p. 83
Columbia	p. 91
The Escape	p. 105
The War
At Sea	p. 123
Edie Parker	p. 138
The Libertine Circle
The Season of Lucien	p. 155
Birth of a Symbolist	p. 170
Apartment 51	p. 184
Benzedrine Weekends	p. 199
A Father's Death	p. 209
Postwar
Enter Neal Cassady	p. 219
The Road	p. 236
Reaching California	p. 247
Ozone Park	p. 256
"White Ambitions"
The Conquest of Manhattan	p. 269
The Summer of Visions and Parties	p. 275
Enter John Clellon Holmes	p. 285
"The Rudeness of Being"	p. 297
"Rain and Rivers"
"Whither Goest Thou in Thy Shiny Car at Night?"	p. 309
A Change in Luck	p. 320
Continental Divide	p. 332
The Edge of Success	p. 344
The French Canadian Older Brother	p. 356
The "Rush of Truth"
The Unwritable Road Novel	p. 369
The Girl with the Innocent and Pure Eyes	p. 375
"The Voice Is All"	p. 380
The Road Opens Up	p. 392
Deep Form	p. 404
Interior Music
Visions of Neal	p. 413
Tranced Fixations	p. 417
Rêves	p. 430
Acknowledgments	p. 437
Notes	p. 439
Index	p. 473
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