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 All deals with him on his own terms and puts the tragic contradictions of his nature and his complex relationships into perspective. Review Praise for The Voice Is All “Spectacular…definitely the Kerouac book for our time…traces the birth of a literary genius and dispels many of the Kerouac myths: that he wrote from memory, not the imagination, and that he wrote spontaneously and without revising…The Voice is All has a lot going for it, including the author’s own confidence-inspiring voice that plunges readers into the maelstrom of Kerouac’s intensely creative and yet intensely self-destructive life, and then pulls readers back and provides much needed detachment…Johnson knows how to create suspense and weave the complex lives of her characters into a narrative that rumbles along…her own voice is eloquent, her prose clear and crisp.” —Jonah Raskin, The San Francisco Chronicle “A major new biography that traces the gradual emergence of the voice that came to define Kerouac’s distinctive style of autobiographical fiction…Johnson redirects our focus to Kerouac’s writing – an aspect that has been overshadowed by his legend…she suggests his internal struggle to navigate his mixed ethnic identity gave his prose a hard-earned depth and directness…By forcing us to reckon with Kerouac as a Franco-American author, Johnson has reminded us of the immense and often unseen burden of forging a life on the margins of two cultures – even for someone as emblematically American as Kerouac.” —Lauren Du Graf, thedailybeast.com#biography

ISBN: 9780670025107