Joyce Johnson

Jack Kerouac’s Journey

For On the Road’s author, whose centenary is this month, it was a struggle to write, then a struggle to live with its fame. “My work is found, my life is lost,” he wrote.

Pearl Harbor and After

“The War,” as I came to think of it, seemed a distant rumble during my Brooklyn childhood. Only later would I feel the dark ways it reverberated through our lives.

My Abortion War Story

“You’ll feel as good as new,” Andy had said to me in the cab that was taking us back to Manhattan, “once you forget this whole thing. Remember, sweetheart, none of this ever happened.”

Kerouac and Frank's Shared Vision

It was the fall of 1957, shortly after the publication of On the Road. Jack Kerouac was my boyfriend then, and I was very young.

‘Beat Women’: An Exchange

War Crimes