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In the Night Cafe
In 1960s Greenwich Village, Joanna tries to understand Tom, a free-spirited painter who despite his remembered feelings of loneliness and dislocation after his father left the family, has abandoned his own two children. (Nancy Pearl)
231 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
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470 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Johnson
102 books103 followersBorn Joyce Glassman to a Jewish family in Queens, New York, Joyce was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, just around the corner from the apartment of William S. Burroughs and Joan Vollmer Burroughs. Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac were frequent visitors to Burroughs' apartment.
At the age of 13, Joyce rebelled against her controlling parents and began hanging out in Washington Square. She matriculated at Barnard College at 16, failing her graduation by one class. It was at Barnard that she became friends with Elise Cowen (briefly Allen Ginsberg's lover) who introduced her to the Beat circle. Ginsberg arranged for Glassman and Kerouac to meet on a blind date.
Joyce was married briefly to abstract painter James Johnson, who was killed in a motorcycle accident. From her second marriage to painter Peter Pinchbeck, which ended in divorce, came her son, Daniel Pinchbeck, also an author and co-founder of Open City literary magazine.
Since 1983 she has taught writing, primarily at Columbia University's MFA program, but also at the Breadloaf Writers Conference, the University of Vermont and New York University. In 1992 she received an NEA grant.
At the age of 13, Joyce rebelled against her controlling parents and began hanging out in Washington Square. She matriculated at Barnard College at 16, failing her graduation by one class. It was at Barnard that she became friends with Elise Cowen (briefly Allen Ginsberg's lover) who introduced her to the Beat circle. Ginsberg arranged for Glassman and Kerouac to meet on a blind date.
Joyce was married briefly to abstract painter James Johnson, who was killed in a motorcycle accident. From her second marriage to painter Peter Pinchbeck, which ended in divorce, came her son, Daniel Pinchbeck, also an author and co-founder of Open City literary magazine.
Since 1983 she has taught writing, primarily at Columbia University's MFA program, but also at the Breadloaf Writers Conference, the University of Vermont and New York University. In 1992 she received an NEA grant.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 3, 2021
4.5 stars
“I woke up with you the next morning, and I thought, Found. I remember it, Found – as if a string had been plucked in the midst of great silence. I heard the note, then the overtones washed over us, not dying but continuing out there in space. I’ve never heard it that way again with anyone, though God knows I’ve listened for it.”
This is a wonderfully nostalgic story of a great love affair set in Greenwich village during the 1960s. But don’t be fooled. This isn’t just some twee romance. It’s written with smart,literary prose, a good dose of melancholy, and a dash of humor. It’s about abandonment, art, loss, and discovering who you want to be. Don’t expect any answers to life’s big questions though, because there aren’t any, are there?
“It’s a good name, you once said, for a vanishing act. To be called Tom Murphy is to be about as ordinary as grass. America has Tom Murphys everywhere.”
Joanna is twenty-six years old and would need four or five hands to count how many lovers she’s had when Tom walks into her life at an end-of-the-world party. It’s not a clichéd love at first sight sort of thing though. She feels an almost magnetic pull towards Tom, and due to the intimate nature of the first person point of view, we get sucked into his orbit as well. From the beginning, the reader immediately feels an impending sense of loss which carries throughout the entire narrative. Tom’s father walked out on his mother when he was just a baby, never to be seen again. Tom in turn has left his wife and children, but still longs for his son in particular to remember him. These facts never stray too far from Joanna’s mind, always haunting her.
“My mind would start searching for you, trying to force up other pictures. I’d suddenly think you could be anywhere. I think I knew you were in danger, that I’d somehow left you exposed to yourself.”
As a child, I knew all too well that feeling: wondering if someone you love will one day not be there. If they could harm themselves or disappear never to be heard from again. I could empathize with both Joanna and Tom. That threat of loss never quite leaves you. I had a hunch that author Joyce Johnson knew this rather personally. You can’t write such feeling without firsthand knowledge of it. You can’t quite evoke such a response from a reader unless you have been to the heart of the matter yourself. After a bit of investigation, I see that I was correct. There’s an autobiographical nature to this novel. Johnson was married to artists and suffered great loss. In this novel, Joanna was also married to an artist whose story eerily parallels that of Johnson’s first husband.
If you enjoy stories set in New York City, particularly 1960s NYC, as well as the artist’s life, with all its trials and torments and occasional glimpses of joy, then this book should really appeal to you as it did me. I’m holding back on half a star only because the last two beauties are still lodged very firmly in my mind. I can’t quite shake them enough to give this a place next to them. While those set me right in the moment along with its characters, this put me at a further distance due to the narrative style, looking back in time as if through a haze, perhaps. Still a great story and one I would highly recommend!
“If I were a painter, I wouldn’t paint empty chairs. Instead I’d paint windows of places I’ve left, places where I no longer live – the way they look when you see them from the street and you know you can’t go up there, can’t even cross the threshold. The key is lost. You know someone else is inside there, taking your place.”
“I woke up with you the next morning, and I thought, Found. I remember it, Found – as if a string had been plucked in the midst of great silence. I heard the note, then the overtones washed over us, not dying but continuing out there in space. I’ve never heard it that way again with anyone, though God knows I’ve listened for it.”
This is a wonderfully nostalgic story of a great love affair set in Greenwich village during the 1960s. But don’t be fooled. This isn’t just some twee romance. It’s written with smart,literary prose, a good dose of melancholy, and a dash of humor. It’s about abandonment, art, loss, and discovering who you want to be. Don’t expect any answers to life’s big questions though, because there aren’t any, are there?
“It’s a good name, you once said, for a vanishing act. To be called Tom Murphy is to be about as ordinary as grass. America has Tom Murphys everywhere.”
Joanna is twenty-six years old and would need four or five hands to count how many lovers she’s had when Tom walks into her life at an end-of-the-world party. It’s not a clichéd love at first sight sort of thing though. She feels an almost magnetic pull towards Tom, and due to the intimate nature of the first person point of view, we get sucked into his orbit as well. From the beginning, the reader immediately feels an impending sense of loss which carries throughout the entire narrative. Tom’s father walked out on his mother when he was just a baby, never to be seen again. Tom in turn has left his wife and children, but still longs for his son in particular to remember him. These facts never stray too far from Joanna’s mind, always haunting her.
“My mind would start searching for you, trying to force up other pictures. I’d suddenly think you could be anywhere. I think I knew you were in danger, that I’d somehow left you exposed to yourself.”
As a child, I knew all too well that feeling: wondering if someone you love will one day not be there. If they could harm themselves or disappear never to be heard from again. I could empathize with both Joanna and Tom. That threat of loss never quite leaves you. I had a hunch that author Joyce Johnson knew this rather personally. You can’t write such feeling without firsthand knowledge of it. You can’t quite evoke such a response from a reader unless you have been to the heart of the matter yourself. After a bit of investigation, I see that I was correct. There’s an autobiographical nature to this novel. Johnson was married to artists and suffered great loss. In this novel, Joanna was also married to an artist whose story eerily parallels that of Johnson’s first husband.
If you enjoy stories set in New York City, particularly 1960s NYC, as well as the artist’s life, with all its trials and torments and occasional glimpses of joy, then this book should really appeal to you as it did me. I’m holding back on half a star only because the last two beauties are still lodged very firmly in my mind. I can’t quite shake them enough to give this a place next to them. While those set me right in the moment along with its characters, this put me at a further distance due to the narrative style, looking back in time as if through a haze, perhaps. Still a great story and one I would highly recommend!
“If I were a painter, I wouldn’t paint empty chairs. Instead I’d paint windows of places I’ve left, places where I no longer live – the way they look when you see them from the street and you know you can’t go up there, can’t even cross the threshold. The key is lost. You know someone else is inside there, taking your place.”
August 1, 2020
ETA: Since it is the prose that for me makes this book so exceptional, I have added some quotes, despite that it is often misleading to take lines out of their context:
“Tom was drawing all the time, every time his fingers found a pencil.”
“The old man……crushed them with his money!”
“You made me think of him in sinister pastels.”
“I wished we all could just be real to each other.”
Joanna, hanging on to Tom on his Harley Davidson thinks, this is “being like you, instead of like me.”
and
“I was having an attack of happiness.”
At the Kennedy assassination:
“Like everyone in America, we lost a week to television.”
“…muffled fake laughter from all the televisions”
“I wanted life just to leave us alone. That is the kind of person I was turning into.”
“It’s the guys who remember everything that have to drink.”
“Better watch out for bullshit, it can swallow you up.”
“Winter blew in suddenly that afternoon.”
“It was a beach where fragments of the past washed up.”
“You seem to be left with memories of memories.”
*******************************
This may not be an amazing book for others, but it hits all the right buttons for me. I totally adore it! For me it’s worth five stars.
The prose mirrors how ordinary people thought and talked in NYC in the early 60s. I lived there in the city then. Reading this book, I felt as though I had gone back home. The narrator telling the story did not live where I lived and her life was harder than mine, but this doesn’t matter. I feel a strong affinity with her. The language used and the atmosphere of the time and place are absolutely right.
Joanna is the narrator of the story. She lives in Greenwich Village. Using the first person point of view, she recalls the love of her life and what happens afterwards when he dies. We quickly surmise that he is dead, but how we learn later. First we learn of their time together. It feels as though she is sitting across the table chatting with us, you and me. The start is somewhat confusing. We don’t know who is who yet, but we want to know. We are made curious.
The love of Joanna’s life is a struggling artist. They have little money. With side jobs, they barely scrape by. They have each other, and that is enough. Before they can even marry, he must divorce his first wife. What is drawn is a young couple’s life. When in the first throes of love, even big problems seem small, surmountable. Having no furniture is but a petitesse. If cold, it is just to snuggle up with each other.
The story drawn mirrors elements of the author’s own life.
Joyce Johnson, the author, was of the Beat Generation. They were counterculture. They spoke out against capitalism, authoritarianism and materialism. They stressed the importance of expressing one’s inner self, scorned material possession and disregarded rules imposed by society. These views are reflected in the writing.
Personally, I have no trouble with these views, albeit they are not taken too far. I like Joanna and Tom Murphy. It is he who is her lover. The difficulties of their life feel real to me. He drinks too much. She is no angel either.
Tom dies on , but maybe, had they stayed together longer, their relationship would have gone down rather than up, making this a realistic and good ending. I don’t find the ending dark or gloomy; I find it realistic and beautiful. Later, Joanna passes by their studio and sees a light shining from within. I’m pleased that she later . It doesn’t matter in the least that . Not only do I love the author’s words, I like what she does with the plot!
There is in fact not one thing I dislike in the telling of this story. I have talked and talked, dome my best to explain what I like, and you have yet to taste how Joyce Johnson puts together words. They are the best of all. They are not flashy. They are real. They are true to life in the 60s in NYC.
Tom often calls out to Joanna, addressing her as—"Hey, kiddo!” Doesn’t that put a smile on your face? It does mine. I see reality and humor in the lines.
There is a hospital episode. It is realistic. It is moving. It spoke to me. I was in a hospital in NYC in the 60s. This is how I know what is drawn is realistic. It is certainly not in the least strange that I connect to the story.
If you ask me, I think this book is fantastic. Read it and see. It’s a hidden treasure.
Or listen to it. The audiobook is read by Aimee Jolson. Her reading matches perfectly the style of the prose—natural and simple. Clear. Easy to follow. Five stars for the narration. It is read just as it should be read. You hear the lines, and it is this that is important.
*****************
Female authors of the Beat Generation:
*In the Night Cafe by Joyce Johnson 5 stars
*Come and Join the Dance by Joyce Johnson 4 stars
*How I Became Hettie Jones by Hettie Jones 3 stars
*Bad Connections by Joyce Johnson TBR
“Tom was drawing all the time, every time his fingers found a pencil.”
“The old man……crushed them with his money!”
“You made me think of him in sinister pastels.”
“I wished we all could just be real to each other.”
Joanna, hanging on to Tom on his Harley Davidson thinks, this is “being like you, instead of like me.”
and
“I was having an attack of happiness.”
At the Kennedy assassination:
“Like everyone in America, we lost a week to television.”
“…muffled fake laughter from all the televisions”
“I wanted life just to leave us alone. That is the kind of person I was turning into.”
“It’s the guys who remember everything that have to drink.”
“Better watch out for bullshit, it can swallow you up.”
“Winter blew in suddenly that afternoon.”
“It was a beach where fragments of the past washed up.”
“You seem to be left with memories of memories.”
*******************************
This may not be an amazing book for others, but it hits all the right buttons for me. I totally adore it! For me it’s worth five stars.
The prose mirrors how ordinary people thought and talked in NYC in the early 60s. I lived there in the city then. Reading this book, I felt as though I had gone back home. The narrator telling the story did not live where I lived and her life was harder than mine, but this doesn’t matter. I feel a strong affinity with her. The language used and the atmosphere of the time and place are absolutely right.
Joanna is the narrator of the story. She lives in Greenwich Village. Using the first person point of view, she recalls the love of her life and what happens afterwards when he dies. We quickly surmise that he is dead, but how we learn later. First we learn of their time together. It feels as though she is sitting across the table chatting with us, you and me. The start is somewhat confusing. We don’t know who is who yet, but we want to know. We are made curious.
The love of Joanna’s life is a struggling artist. They have little money. With side jobs, they barely scrape by. They have each other, and that is enough. Before they can even marry, he must divorce his first wife. What is drawn is a young couple’s life. When in the first throes of love, even big problems seem small, surmountable. Having no furniture is but a petitesse. If cold, it is just to snuggle up with each other.
The story drawn mirrors elements of the author’s own life.
Joyce Johnson, the author, was of the Beat Generation. They were counterculture. They spoke out against capitalism, authoritarianism and materialism. They stressed the importance of expressing one’s inner self, scorned material possession and disregarded rules imposed by society. These views are reflected in the writing.
Personally, I have no trouble with these views, albeit they are not taken too far. I like Joanna and Tom Murphy. It is he who is her lover. The difficulties of their life feel real to me. He drinks too much. She is no angel either.
Tom dies on , but maybe, had they stayed together longer, their relationship would have gone down rather than up, making this a realistic and good ending. I don’t find the ending dark or gloomy; I find it realistic and beautiful. Later, Joanna passes by their studio and sees a light shining from within. I’m pleased that she later . It doesn’t matter in the least that . Not only do I love the author’s words, I like what she does with the plot!
There is in fact not one thing I dislike in the telling of this story. I have talked and talked, dome my best to explain what I like, and you have yet to taste how Joyce Johnson puts together words. They are the best of all. They are not flashy. They are real. They are true to life in the 60s in NYC.
Tom often calls out to Joanna, addressing her as—"Hey, kiddo!” Doesn’t that put a smile on your face? It does mine. I see reality and humor in the lines.
There is a hospital episode. It is realistic. It is moving. It spoke to me. I was in a hospital in NYC in the 60s. This is how I know what is drawn is realistic. It is certainly not in the least strange that I connect to the story.
If you ask me, I think this book is fantastic. Read it and see. It’s a hidden treasure.
Or listen to it. The audiobook is read by Aimee Jolson. Her reading matches perfectly the style of the prose—natural and simple. Clear. Easy to follow. Five stars for the narration. It is read just as it should be read. You hear the lines, and it is this that is important.
*****************
Female authors of the Beat Generation:
*In the Night Cafe by Joyce Johnson 5 stars
*Come and Join the Dance by Joyce Johnson 4 stars
*How I Became Hettie Jones by Hettie Jones 3 stars
*Bad Connections by Joyce Johnson TBR
July 20, 2021
The thing was, though, I did trust him. I trusted him with me but not with himself.
You know that anxiety about books which you loved when younger but which you worry as to whether they'll stand up to an older re-reading? Well, this one does! Johnson has written a book which manages to contain all the blazing youth and quest for freedom of the best Beat literature with a more sober assessment of the cost that must be paid.
Set in late 1950s/early 1960s boho New York, this is a fine companion to books like Kerouac's On the Road reading which always makes me think about the deeply gendered nature of 'the road' where women wait at home, men travel and assorted children are left fatherless across the American landscape. Of course, it's not quite that simple, as Kerouac himself articulates, but all the same Johnson has penned a part of a dialogue that can sometimes be blurred.
Centred on the profound love affair/marriage between Joanna and Tom, the latter damaged in so many ways: his early desertion by his father, his hard and cruel mother, his wartime experiences, his first failed marriage and his own abandonment of his son - almost as if dereliction is hardwired into his psyche, his compensatory drinking.
But this is not a depressing misery-fest of a book: Johnson is too canny, too attuned to the ways in which great happiness and great unhappiness are mutually self-supporting and how pain may be the source of art. The imagery of red, black and white colours the book as do the light from the stars and moon which light the darkness. And there's a kind of ravishing romance about death which this novel captures.
Johnson's prose is fluent and natural, it reads effortlessly and that very flow is perhaps a testament to her craft which remains invisible. It's especially noticeable how graceful and unforced is her switching between 1st person, the difficult 2nd person, and a kind of reported 3rd person narration throughout. And by the end we're left with the image of a woman who has made herself vulnerable in the most profound way, who has suffered and survived, who has truly lived.
The front of the place was absolutely dark, but a light was burning all the way in back. I said to myself, Tom's home. And I believed for that moment that he was.
July 22, 2017
I read this shortly after I had read Patti Smith's "Just Kids.....". Interesting juxtaposition. I began to understand how many of us were groomed as muses in the 60's and 70's and how difficult it is not to romanticize that kind of inequality in relationships.
August 15, 2022
This book was so good I forgot about it for a long time insert irony. While not bad and it had some neat ideas about what true art is with one man's refusal to paint anything but abstract paintings, I thought it mediocre. An ex friend recommended it, who didn't read much, who knows if she does now, and weirdly worked at the time at a library (well later). I just felt and feel it was made up to cover up porny writing. There's entertainment but unless I read lines that are superlative since it felt more like promotion, I lose interest. Read word for word as I do 99 percent and change of what I post. And then there's many I haven't. And of course many books I will not read or don't have time to read, and simply sometimes it's nice not to read. Currently on another bout of a break.
September 1, 2017
I bought this book 20+ years ago at one of those warehouses where everything sold for under $3.00. I liked the cover and the book blurb. All these many years later, I finally broke it out of cold storage and read it. After a brief, awkward period of getting to know who the characters were, this turned into a delightful little read.
The protagonist, Joanna, lives an uneventful life until she meets Tom, an artist with a haunted past. He's not a very good person, but they manage to make an unstable alliance in Greenwich Village during the early '60s.
This story is all first person narrative, told from Joanna's POV. To me, it felt like she was trapped in a relationship that wasn't doing her any favors. Tom is a hard drinking, hard living force who rages against everything "normal" in society. He's not a very reliable person. Joanna on the other hand is responsible, has a steady job, worries about her mother's opinion, etc...
While mostly waiting for the anvil to drop, I became invested in her character, hoping for the best, which I knew wasn't going to happen. Thankfully, the protagonist does enjoy some closure at the end. While this is not a "great" novel, it does have some brief moments of beautiful prose, some moving sentences and phrases that hint at greater stuff. Probably closer to a 3 1/2 rating, but a solid read..
The protagonist, Joanna, lives an uneventful life until she meets Tom, an artist with a haunted past. He's not a very good person, but they manage to make an unstable alliance in Greenwich Village during the early '60s.
This story is all first person narrative, told from Joanna's POV. To me, it felt like she was trapped in a relationship that wasn't doing her any favors. Tom is a hard drinking, hard living force who rages against everything "normal" in society. He's not a very reliable person. Joanna on the other hand is responsible, has a steady job, worries about her mother's opinion, etc...
While mostly waiting for the anvil to drop, I became invested in her character, hoping for the best, which I knew wasn't going to happen. Thankfully, the protagonist does enjoy some closure at the end. While this is not a "great" novel, it does have some brief moments of beautiful prose, some moving sentences and phrases that hint at greater stuff. Probably closer to a 3 1/2 rating, but a solid read..
October 15, 2023
How painful it is to love fiercely
November 10, 2014
In the Night Cafe begins with promise--a widow meets the young children of her deceased husband and wishes she could take the boy for herself. I thought there was a lot of potential here, but the story abandons this idea and becomes an account of the joys and heartbreak of being married to an alcoholic abstract impressionist painter who can't sell his work. Fair enough. I was interested, up to a point. But then the narrative takes another 360 and ends with the narrator's second marriage, then the birth and illness of her son.
I know nothing about the author or her work, and from reading other reviews I see now that this novel is probably autobiographical. Although I like to think all people's lives are interesting, this story was disjointed and therefore unsatisfying--especially the ending.
I know nothing about the author or her work, and from reading other reviews I see now that this novel is probably autobiographical. Although I like to think all people's lives are interesting, this story was disjointed and therefore unsatisfying--especially the ending.
July 14, 2014
The male authors of the Beat generation--Kerouac and the like--preferred to see Joyce Johnson as a hanger on of decorative and carnal use. I don't know whether they ever realised that she could write the backside off the lot of them--but she could. This is a novel that stays long in the memory.
July 12, 2021
I really enjoyed this bittersweet book although it took a sharp turn in very last section into a complete other situation. I read it after I finished the masterful "Minor Characters" and although the Greenwich Village milieu is the same, this book did not appear to be autobiographical at all. I think the female character was similar to Ms. Johnson's personality but her experiences were differ. Both characters are touching and the book abounds with wonderful vignettes about bohemian life in the early 1960s.
February 1, 2019
A gem of a book about NYC in the ‘60s. Reads half like a memoir (although it is fiction) and half like a letter to her husband, switching constantly between the narrative “he” and the familiar “you.”
January 14, 2025
The thing I liked most about this read was how she wrote about the setting, the place, the mood of the times. I didn’t realize until I had finished the book how/where she fit into the Beat Generation.
March 14, 2018
1 star
Opinion: I don't even know what this book was about. Kinda defeats the purpose of a book.
Opinion: I don't even know what this book was about. Kinda defeats the purpose of a book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 31, 2021
One of the best descriptions of loss I’ve read. Interesting to hear the women’s beat perspective. I recommend
December 26, 2021
A great post-Beat novel
July 8, 2025
Haunting prose, a real little gem though the last bit seemed disjointed.
February 6, 2008
A fictional account of Johnson's real life relationship with her first husband (detailed in Missing Men), In the Night Cafe is heartbreaking at points. The chapter that begins after Johanna and Tom spend their first night together in particular wrecked me a bit. Johanna wakes up and thinks, "Found." For the first time in her life she feels like she has found that which she has always been searching for. The author's conclusion at the end that maybe Johanna and Tom's life together would not have lasted even if death had not ended it after only a year, and that despite being married twice she doesn't really know anything about marriage, made the story more realistic than tragic. It all makes sense when you read Missing Men and realize Johnson used writing to help her analyze and digest the rough luck she was given in love. Beautifully written and containing mature insight into life and love, I really enjoyed In the Night Cafe. However, Missing Men, maybe because it's a memoir, had more of an effect on me overall.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 17, 2015
Sweetness and sadness intermingle in this fine, truth telling novel. We sit inside our narrators mind as we travel the fast paced life of a native New Yorker in the early sixties, travelling between bars, tenement buildings and time, all intertwined with the knowledge that life, as we see it, is so vast, and yet, so nuanced. A book full of humility and the lightness of being.
January 6, 2015
Wasn't what I was expecting, but yet was still a good enough read. Loved how it goes back in time of New York! After reading this and then looking at the way things are in today's generations, big difference!
*Received for an honest review*
*Received for an honest review*
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews