Come and Join the Dance

By: Joyce Johnson

Narrated by: Dina Pearlman

The daring debut of the Beat Generation's first woman novelist

It's 1955. Seven days before her graduation from Barnard College, Susan Levitt asks herself, "What if you lived your entire life without urgency?" - just before going out to make things happen to her that will shatter the mask of conformity concealing her feelings of alienation. If Susan continues to be "good", marriage and security await her. But her hunger is rising for the self-discovery that comes from existential freedom.

After breaking up with the Columbia boy she knows she could marry, Susan seeks out those she considers "outlaws": the brave and fragile Kay, who has moved into a rundown hotel, in order to "see more than fifty percent when I walk down the street"; the vulnerable adolescent rebel Anthony; and Peter, the restless hipster graduate student who has become the object of Kay's unrequited devotion.

This fascinating novel - which the author began writing a year before her encounter with Jack Kerouac - is a young woman's complex response to the liberating messages of the Beat Generation. In a subversive feminist move, Johnson gives her heroine all the freedom the male Beat writers reserved for men, to travel her own road.

©1961 Joyce Glassman (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Susan the Rizzler

Had to read this story for a class, great short story! Loved the reader’s voice, very accurate for portraying New Yorker accents. Lastly, how the hell do none of these DUDES know how to make a chick come. She was chill with it BUT STILL god damn. I know she didn’t sleep with Jerry but I just know he would even last a full 5 seconds… 10/10 story tho, would read again, also Kay deserves better.