I have practiced this activity with religious devotion and for longer than I can remember. “As a young woman I had one and only one intense and ceaseless pastime, though that’s not the right word, though neither is hobby or passion. This scene calls to mind Claire Vaye Watkins’ 2015 essay “ On Pandering,” in which Watkins introduces the concept of “watching boys do stuff”: She’s telling herself she’s having a swell time as she looks out for cops over her shoulder.” As it crashes along Broadway through the hot, empty streets with Lucien attempting to push it faster and faster, I see Edie Parker running after it a little off to the side. “One night Lucien Carr found an empty barrel and rolled Jack Kerouac home in it - that’s a solemnly recorded fact. Consider this image of Edie Parker in Johnson’s opening chapter: One of the highlights of reading Johnson is precisely what she has promised in her title: a sketch of life as a minor character, a girl stuck on the sidelines of the boy gang camaraderie.

Kerouac mopes through town, between stays at his mother’s house, and crashes on her living room floor. She holds jobs at various literary agencies, gets a book deal, and rents her own apartment.

Whereas in On the Road, et al., the women are all legs and beds – sirens of small towns, briefly featured, ultimately discarded – Johnson is a Barnard graduate and aspiring writer, living in New York City. Speaking for herself, Johnson is almost unrecognizable as a Beat woman. Johnson’s cover features the original photo used in a 1993 Gap ad “Kerouac wore khakis.” As one can see, her figure was gently erased.

Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson