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Minor Characters
by Johnson, Joyce
- Used
- near fine
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Near Fine/Fine
- Seller
-
Ridgewood, New York, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
NY: Norton, 1983. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Near Fine/Fine. First edition. Signed by Johnson on the half-title. Octavo; 262pp.; ochre boards, black quarter cloth, in dust jacket. Johnson's memoir details her literary coming-of-age in the Beat era, offering sharply drawn portraits of many pivotal writers, with especial focus on Jack Kerouac, Johnson's one-time paramour. Her book also sheds considerable light on the infrequently acknowledged role that women (the "minor characters" alluded to by the title) played in the male-dominated landscape of 1950s literature. Near fine, with slight forward cocking to spine and light bumping to top board corners, in a fine unclipped jacket, lightly tanned to rear panel. A sharp collectible copy of this vivid and deftly written memoir, winner of the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Synopsis
Jack Kerouac. Allen Ginsberg. William S. Burroughs. LeRoi Jones . Theirs are the names primarily associated with the Beat Generation. But what about Joyce Johnson (nee Glassman ), Edie Parker, Elise Cowen, Diane Di Prima , and dozens of others? These female friends and lovers of the famous iconoclasts are now beginning to be recognized for their own roles in forging the Beat movement and for their daring attempts to live as freely as did the men in their circle a decade before Women's Liberation. Twenty-one-year-old Joyce Johnson , an aspiring novelist and a secretary at a New York literary agency, fell in love with Jack Kerouac on a blind date arranged by Allen Ginsberg nine months before the publication of On the Road made Kerouac an instant celebrity. While Kerouac traveled to Tangiers, San Francisco, and Mexico City, Johnson roamed the streets of the East Village, where she found herself in the midst of the cultural revolution the Beats had created. Minor Characters portrays the turbulent years of her relationship with Kerouac with extraordinary wit and love and a cool, critical eye, introducing the reader to a lesser known but purely original American voice: her own.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Dividing Line Books
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 001327
- Title
- Minor Characters
- Author
- Johnson, Joyce
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Near Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Publisher
- Norton
- Place of Publication
- NY
- Date Published
- 1983
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
Terms of Sale
Dividing Line Books
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About the Seller
Dividing Line Books
Biblio member since 2016
Ridgewood, New York
About Dividing Line Books
Dividing Line Books offers interesting and rare books in the fields of modern literature and counterculture, with developing specialties in artists' books, the psychedelic movement, and other avant-garde streams of the 20th century and beyond. Member IOBA.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
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