An intimate of Kerouac who has chronicled his life and the beat culture (including in her award-winning 1983 memoir, Minor Characters), Johnson brings an insider's perspective to this insightful study of how Kerouac found his literary voice. Delving into his formative years, she paints a portrait of the artist as a sensitive young man, haunted from age four by the death of his older brother, Gerard, and hampered by his family's frequent moves. In her most novel analysis, Johnson asserts that growing up speaking joual in his insular French-Canadian household fostered an unwieldy internal translation process whereby Kerouac "had to figure out how to capture his 'simultaneous impressions' in English." Kerouac's voracious reading of Thomas Wolfe, Dostoyevski, and Celine; restless travels; drinking and drug use; prolific writing and revising; and socializing with fellow beats-especially Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, John Clellon Holmes, and Neal Cassady-kept him striving to express "'the big rushing tremendousness in me and all poets.'" In unsparing detail, Johnson depicts Kerouac's contradictions and self-destructive tendencies, and the recklessness of certain relationships that impeded as much as they facilitated the discovery of his true voice. Johnson excels in her colorful, candid assessment of the evolution of this voice-up through the genesis of On the Road-the point where most other appraisals of Kerouac begin. Agent: Irene Skolnick, Irene Skolnick Literary Agency. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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 (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

*Starred Review* Johnson chronicled her indelible relationship with the author of On the Road in her acclaimed memoir, Minor Characters (1983). She now proves herself to be a rigorous, knowledgeable, and penetrating biographer in this engrossing portrait of Kerouac as a divided soul. Johnson investigates the consequences of the childhood death of his older brother and Kerouac's compensatory entanglement with his mother and his suspension between Franco-American and New England cultures and the French Canadian dialect joual and English. Kerouac's survivor's guilt and never feeling wholly American, Johnson argues, were catalysts for his spiritual quest, hunger for books, and need to write. She offers exceptionally lucid coverage of his depression, alcoholism, and every significant relationship in his surging life, including his now legendary friendships with Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. But 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 as drawing inspiration from Thomas Wolfe, Balzac, Dostoevsky, and jazz he created his alter ego, Jack Duluoz, and devoted himself to the grand and demanding vision of writing the saga of his own life as it unfolded. Johnson ends her intricately revelatory biography just before she and Kerouac met in 1957, leaving readers wanting more of her insights into this revolutionary writer for whom work was everything. --Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist