Born in 1935, Joyce Johnson is a memoirist and novelist, best known for Minor Characters, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983. Her eight books include the novels Come and Join the Dance, Bad Connections and In the Night Café, and a second memoir Missing Men. The Voice Is All, her Kerouac biography, was published in 2012.

What brought you to the Library?

In 2008, I signed a contract with my publisher Viking/Penguin for a biography of Jack Kerouac entitled The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac. It was a book I had long wanted to write, but I did not attempt to do so until it became possible to use the enormous Kerouac archive that the Berg Collection had acquired. Initially, because of the policies of the Kerouac Estate, only the writer chosen by John Sampas to be Kerouac’s authorized biographer had access to the papers in it. When he decided not to go ahead with the book, the archive became available to other writers and scholars, under certain limitations that made writing an unauthorized work a challenging task.

Describe your research routine

I had made myself a copy of the 300-page catalog of the archive, so that I could use it at home to put together lists of the files I wanted to see. Over the next two and a half years, I spent two or three days a week in the Library. I was going through the Kerouac papers chronologically and writing as I proceeded with my research so that my responses to my findings would be fresh. I spent my time at the Berg taking notes. The authorized biographer had been able to Xerox and quote whatever he wanted. But the Estate had ruled out that option for me. I only had the right to quote a tiny fraction of any unpublished text—no more than a few words or a phrase or two;  the rest I had to describe in my own words. But at least I was able to view and read whatever was in the archive. During the forty years before it came to the Berg, Kerouac biographers had been given little or no access to it. Deprived of those very essential papers, writers made assumptions, errors or omissions that set Kerouac research back for years.

What’s your favorite spot in the Library?

It was definitely the Berg Collection. Once you opened the door and stepped into the chilled, temperature-controlled atmosphere, you were in a special hushed and timeless world with its own weather. I loved the old oak tables and chairs, even though, because I am short, they were not very comfortable when I was using the computer. Once I asked if I could use the small antique writing desk I noticed in one corner because it seemed the right size for me. I was immediately told that I couldn’t because it had belonged to Charles Dickens. It had been acquired with the original cane-seated chair, which had caved under the considerable weight of Fiorello LaGuardia, the mayor of New York, at the dedication ceremony.

When did you first get the idea for your research project?

As a very young woman, I had been involved with Kerouac from 1957-58, the period before, during and after the publication of On the Road. I first wrote about this period in my 1983 memoir, Minor Characters; in 2000, Door Wide Open, a collection of the letters Jack and I had written each other had also been published with the consent of the Estate, though the consent had been withheld when I was writing my memoir.

Over five decades I had kept tabs on what others wrote about Kerouac, often feeling that what I read was off the mark, no matter how extensive the research had been. I also felt that there were important things I did not know about Jack myself that might be crucial to understanding him. So the desire to do a biography myself slowly grew. By the time I was in my seventies, I had become more and more convinced that it was necessary to explore the far reaching influence of his Franco American heritage and language, which no American biographer had emphasized or examined very thoroughly, although up in Montreal Henri Levi-Beaulieu had written very eloquently about it. I also was very interested in how Jack had developed his unique  voice after resisting first-person writing and disguising his cultural identity in his writings (including On the Road) until he was almost thirty. As I started my book, I was still operating on a hunch, but bit by bit I found what I was looking for at the Berg, dispersed through Kerouac’s journals, notebooks and unpublished manuscripts. Sometimes just a few sentences shed light on so much.

What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?

It was the novella, La Nuit Est Ma Femme, that Jack had written in the French Canadian language just a few weeks before he wrote On the Road. By writing in the language he still thought and dreamed in, he discovered the authentic, highly personal, French-inflected voice he had been searching for in which he wrote all his subsequent books.

What research tool could you not live without?

Because the Kerouac archive is so vast, it would have been an overwhelming task to take all my notes with a No. 2 pencil. Fortunately, the Macbook Air had been invented. I was also lucky to find a  wonderful research assistant, Brittney Canty, a young writer enrolled in the MFA program at the New School. We worked side by side at our computers.

Describe a moment when your research took an unexpected turn

I had originally intended to cover Kerouac’s entire life. But after I read his 1951 journals, in which he recorded his development as a writer from the completion of On the Road to the composition of the opening section of Visions of Cody, the book he once told me he regarded as his masterpiece, I realized the story I had set out to tell about Jack came to a natural conclusion in late 1951, when he found a way to write with an even greater freedom than he’d given himself  in the novel he had finished in the spring. “I’m lost, but my work is found,” he wrote that December. The day I came across that line, I knew I had my ending.

How do you maintain your research momentum?

My complete immersion in both the research and the writing created an energy that carried me along from day to day for nearly three years. I felt bereft when all the work was done.

Where is your favorite place to eat in the neighborhood?

It was Bryant Park—the perfect place to take a break from the Berg Collection for an hour or so.  I’d eat my Pret a Manger sandwiches there, confer with Brittney Canty and stare at the trees.

Advice to other researchers:

Be open to all surprises along the way. While you may write a detailed proposal at the outset, you really do not know where your research will take you.

To learn more about research at the Library, check out our Doing Research classes, or connect with the Berg Collection directly at berg@nypl.org.