Johnston's tale is wonderfully idiosyncratic, embellished with the sky-high imagery and roaring sexual politics that made her prose famous. . . . What's most remarkable about this volume is the dignity and self-understanding we sense in a former wild child as she gathers the past about her.

Laura Shapiro

The Washington Post

Paper Daughter, as they used to say in the 60s, is a head trip.  Any reader who takes this trip with Jill Johnston had better have his engine finely tunedand seat belts fastened. [It] is not an easy read; but then Jill Johnston's was not an easy ride.

Jeanne McManus

New York Times Book Review

What makes [Paper Daughter] especially interesting is its blend of flinty intelligence and emotional detachment.

Helen Dudar

Art in America 1-1986

Paper Daughter presents a fascinating, illuminating overview of the New York art world during a particular ebullient, frenetic, and conflicted period. . . . Johnston's book restores the exhilarating immediacy and much of the emotional and artistic confusion that then prevailed.

David Bourdon

Publishers Weekly

[Johnston's] prose is as tough and punchy as ever . . . A sharp portrait of the explosive vital late 60s New York arts scene.

Booklist

Johnston's opus is a lyrically written, highly powerful personal examination of an excruciating identity crisis. It is also an intimate glimpse into the bizarre, colorful activities of New York's avant-garde artistic community in the late 1960s.

Pittsburgh Press, 1985

This book will appeal to those who savor excellent writing.

Virginia Peden

I loved Paper Daughter. The writing is elegant and delightful. And it's a fascinating narrative, both as personal history and as a record of the times. It's is the most illuminating description of a psychosis I've ever readneither glorified nor degraded.

Philip Slater

[Paper Daughter] is a joyTo be sane about insanity is the neatest trick in anybody's book, and Jill Johnston's has it.

Peter Schjeldahl

New Directions for Women

Back when Johnston was bringing forth (with others) our contemporary sensibility, she gave mightily of herself, and reading her story makes us understand something about the frontier spirit of the 60s and the pioneering nature of her gift.

Blair Birmelin