Joyce Johnson was born in 1935 in New York City, the setting for
all her fiction: Come and Join the Dance, recognized as the
first Beat novel by a woman writer, Bad Connections, and
In the Night Cafe. She is best known for her memoir Minor
Characters, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in
1983 and dealt with coming of age in the 1950s and with her
involvement with Jack Kerouac. She has published two other
Beat-related books: Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in
Letters, and The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack
Kerouac. She has also written a second memoir, Missing
Men, and the nonfiction title What Lisa Knew: The Truths and
Lies of the Steinberg Case.
"With its female bohemian perspective on sex, cold war
existentialism and the New York hipster milieu, Come and Join
the Dance stands as a Beat urtext, on par with the renegade
declarations of On the Road or Howl or Naked
Lunch." -Ronna Johnson, author of Girls Who Wore
Black
"This artful and unaffected first novel by 26-year-old Joyce
Glassman reminds us that youth is no fixed quantity or state with
an all-explaining adjective. It is a period of becoming whose
essence is flux: the lostness or wildness are merely way stations
along this road of change." -The New York Times Book
Review
"Lucid and controlled as a writer, Miss Glassman has a rare gift
for the evocative phrase. . . . There are parallels between this
novel and those of Francoise Sagan, but the ingenuousness here is
of a more honest sort. . . . Tartness reduces sentimentality;
compassion balances cleverness." -The Village Voice
"Tender and perceptive." -Anniston Star
"A poignant and searching tale which effectively captures each
character's personality. The threads of life are expertly woven
into the fabric to yield an interesting work." -Savannah Morning
News
"This is a perceptive, emotional story, aptly titled; it could be
happening now among the intellectuals at any university in any big
city." -Los Angeles Times
"Written with talent and wisdom." -Jack Kerouac
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