Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir

January 1957: girl meets boy on a blind date arranged by Allen Ginsberg. The girl was Joyce Johnson, the boy Jack Kerouac, and it was nine months before ‘On The Road’ became a permanent part of the American vocabulary.

But like Robin Hood’s and Peter Pan’s, Jack’s was a boy gang. Women were minor characters at best, though they risked much more to live as freely as the rebels they loved.

Tender, observant and beautifully written, Joyce Johnson’s award-winning ‘Minor Characters’ is both a personal memoir and an unforgettable portrait of that whole, near-mythical, generation: the Beats.