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Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Paperback – Deckle Edge, November 2, 2010
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WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
“Reading rocker Smith’s account of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, it’s hard not to believe in fate. How else to explain the chance encounter that threw them together, allowing both to blossom? Quirky and spellbinding.” -- People
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-Second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max’s Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous, the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateNovember 2, 2010
- Dimensions0.9 x 5.4 x 8.2 inches
- ISBN-100060936223
- ISBN-13978-0060936228
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“[Just Kids] reminds us that innocence, utopian ideals, beauty and revolt are enlightenment’s guiding stars in the human journey. Her book recalls, without blinking or faltering, a collective memory ― one that guides us through the present and into the future.” — Michael Stipe, Time magazine
“Reading rocker Smith’s account of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, it’s hard not to believe in fate. How else to explain the chance encounter that threw them together, allowing both to blossom? Quirky and spellbinding.” — People, Top 10 Books of 2010
“The most enchantingly evocative memoir of funky-but-chic New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s that any alumnus has yet committed to print.” — Janet Maslin's top 10 books of 2010, New York Times
“Composed of incandescent sentences more revelatory than anything from Patti Smith’s poems or songs, her romantic memoir also reveals what blunt narrative instruments the earlier career bios of her and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe have been.” — Village Voice, Best Books of 2010 Round-Up
“Smith’s beautifully crafted love letter to her friend Robert Mapplethorpe functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by passion for art and writing. Her elegant eulogy lays bare the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpe’s life and work.” — Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Books of the Year
“Poetically written and vividly remembered. [Smith] reminded me of the idealism of art.” — Matthew Weiner, creator of MAD MEN, in New York magazine
“A spellbinding portrait of bohemian New York in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.” — New York Times Book Review, Paperback Row
“One of the best things I’ve ever read in my life.” — Don Imus
“Sometimes there is justice in the world. That was my first thought when I heard that Patti Smith had won the National Book Award this fall for her glorious memoir, Just Kids.” — Maureen Corrigan's favorite books of 2010, NPR's Fresh Air
“[JUST KIDS] offers a revealing account of the fears and insecurities harbored by even the most incendiary artists, as well as their capacity for reverence and tenderness.” — USA Today
“Smith’s writing about her early days with Mapplethorpe is fervid and incantatory but never falls into incoherence.” — The Oregonian (Portland)
“A heartbreakingly sweet recollection of just that sort of vanished Bohemian life...Just as [Smith] stands out as an artiste in a movement based on collectivism, her singular voice gleams among rock memoirs as a work of literature.” — Boston Globe
“Just Kids shows how Smith integrated the romance of her twenty-year friendship with Mapplethorpe with her historical preoccupations, elevating them to an almost sacred status. The past, for Smith, has always driven her life forward. If only we could all be so free-spirited.” — The Rumpus
“Patti Smith’s telling of the years she spent with Robert Mapplethorpe is full of optimism sprinkled with humor...JUST KIDS...is sorely lacking in irony or cynicism; Smith’s worldview is infectious. She’s a jumble of influences, but that’s part of her charm.” — Austin American-Statesman
“A moving portrait of the artist as a young woman, and a vibrant profile of Smith’s onetime boyfriend and lifelong muse, Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989...JUST KIDS is ultimately a wonderful portal into the dawn of Smith’s art.” — Los Angeles Times
“A remarkable book --sweet and charming and many other words you wouldn’t expect to apply to a punk-rock icon.” — Newsday
” A story of art, identity, devotion, discovery, and love, the book is [Smith’s] first prose work...[it] conjures up the passionate collaboration--as lovers, friends, soul mates, and creators--that she and Mapplethorpe embarked on from the summer they met in Brooklyn in 1967.” — Elle
“Deeply affecting...a vivid portrayal of a bygone New York that could support a countercultural artistic firmament...the power of this book comes from [Smith’s] ability to recall lucid memories in straightforward prose.” — BookForum
“Funny, fascinating, oddly tender.” — O, The Oprah Magazine
“Patti Smith’s memoir of her youth with Robert Mapplethorpe testifies to a rare and ferocious innocence...’Just Kids’ is a book utterly lacking in irony or sophisticated cynicism.” — Salon.com
“A shockingly beautiful book...a classic, a romance about becoming an artist in the city, written in a spare, simple style of boyhood memoirs like Frank Conroy’s ‘Stop Time.’” — New York Magazine
“[A] beautifully crafted love letter to [Robert Mapplethorpe]...Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York...[a] tender and tough memoir...[an] elegant eulogy.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Riveting and exquisitely crafted.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Captivating....a poignant requiem...and a radiant celebration of life. Grade: A.” — Entertainment Weekly
“More than 30 years after its release, Horses still has the power to shock and inspire young musicians to express themselves with unbridled passion. Now she brings the same raw, lyrical quality to her first book of prose.” — Clive Davis, Vanity Fair
“In the end, [JUST KIDS is] not just an ode to Mapplethorpe, but a love letter to New York City’s ‘70s art scene itself.” — Time Out New York
“The most compelling memoir by a rock artist since Bob Dylan’s ‘Chronicles: Volume One,’ written with intimacy and grace....” — Chicago Tribune
“Astonishing on many levels, most notably for Smith’s lapidary prose....[JUST KIDS] is simply one of the best memoirs to be published in recent years: inspiring, sad, wise and beautifully written.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“[JUST KIDS] is funny and sad but always exhilarating.” — Tampa Tribune
“Terrifically evocative and splendidly titled...the most spellbinding and diverting portrait of funky-but-chic New York in the late ’60s and early ’70s that any alumnus has committed to print....This enchanting book is a reminder that not all youthful vainglory is silly; sometimes it’s preparation.” — New York Times Book Review
“A touching tale of love and devotion.” — Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers
“JUST KIDS describes [Smith and Mapplethorpe’s] ascent with a forthright sweetness that will ring true to anyone who knows her work.” — Bloomberg.com
“To read JUST KIDS is to be struck by how powerfully the two, especially Smith, believed in the power of art....Despite her music’s angry clamor, despite his sometimes revolting images, Smith and Mapplethorpe retain, in her telling, a primal, childlike innocence.” — Dallas Morning News
“One of the best books ever written on becoming an artist...Jesus may have died for somebody’s sins, but Patti Smith lives and writes and sings for all of us.” — Washington Post
“Remarkable, evocative... JUST KIDS is more than just a gift to [Smith’s] ex-lover; it’s a gift to everyone who has ever been touched by their art, and to everyone who’s ever been in love. Like the best of Smith’s music and Mapplethorpe’s art, this book is haunting and unforgettable.” — NPR Boston
“A revelation. In a spellbinding memoir as notable for its restraint as for its lucidity, its wit as well as its grace, Smith tells the story of how she and Robert Mapplethorpe found each other... beautifully crafted, vivid, and indelible.” — Booklist
“An utterly charming, captivating, intimate portrait of a late 1960s and early 1970s period of intense artistic ferment in downtown Manhattan significantly shaped and keenly observed by rock firebrand Smith.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
“Smith lovingly depicts the denizens of the Chelsea Hotel - is that Janis Joplin at the bar? - and the rock club CBGB, all the while pondering how to be an uncompromising artist who nonetheless needs to pay the rent.” — Boston Globe
“Possibly the most spellbinding account of New York in the ‘70’s ever written." — Dua Lipa
From the Back Cover
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous—the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Just Kids
By Patti SmithEcco
Copyright © 2011 Patti SmithAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-093622-8
Chapter One
When I was very young, my mother took me for
walks in Humboldt Park, along the edge of the Prairie
River. I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates, of
an old boathouse, a circular band shell, an arched stone bridge. The
narrows of the river emptied into a wide lagoon and I saw upon its
surface a singular miracle. A long curving neck rose from a dress of
white plumage.
Swan, my mother said, sensing my excitement. It pattered the
bright water, flapping its great wings, and lifted into the sky.
The word alone hardly attested to its magnificence nor conveyed the
emotion it produced. The sight of it generated an urge I had no words
for, a desire to speak of the swan, to say something of its whiteness, the
explosive nature of its movement, and the slow beating of its wings.
The swan became one with the sky. I struggled to find words to
describe my own sense of it. Swan, I repeated, not entirely satisfied,
and I felt a twinge, a curious yearning, imperceptible to passersby, my
mother, the trees, or the clouds.
I was born on a Monday, in the North Side of Chicago during the
Great Blizzard of 1946. I came along a day too soon, as babies born
on New Year?s Eve left the hospital with a new refrigerator. Despite
my mother?s effort to hold me in, she went into heavy labor as the
taxi crawled along Lake Michigan through a vortex of snow and
wind. By my father?s account, I arrived a long skinny thing with
bronchial pneumonia, and he kept me alive by holding me over a
steaming washtub.
My sister Linda followed during yet another blizzard in 1948.
By necessity I was obliged to measure up quickly. My mother took
in ironing as I sat on the stoop of our rooming house waiting for
the iceman and the last of the horse-drawn wagons. He gave me
slivers of ice wrapped in brown paper. I would slip one in my
pocket for my baby sister, but when I later reached for it, I discov-
ered it was gone.
When my mother became pregnant with my brother, Todd,
we left our cramped quarters in Logan Square and migrated to
Germantown, Pennsylvania. For the next few years we lived in
temporary housing set up for ser-vicemen
and their children?
whitewashed barracks overlooking an abandoned field alive with
wildflowers. We called the field The Patch, and in summertime the
grown-ups would sit and talk, smoke cigarettes, and pass around
jars of dandelion wine while we children played. My mother taught
us the games of her childhood: Statues, Red Rover, and Simon Says.
We made daisy chains to adorn our necks and crown our heads. In
the evenings we collected fireflies in mason jars, extracting their
lights and making rings for our fingers.
My mother taught me to pray; she taught me the prayer her
mother taught her. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul
to keep. At nightfall, I knelt before my little bed as she stood, with her
ever-present cigarette, listening as I recited after her. I wished noth-
ing more than to say my prayers, yet these words troubled me and
I plagued her with questions. What is the soul? What color is it? I
suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was
dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not to fall asleep, to keep it
inside of me where it belonged.
Perhaps to satisfy my curiosity, my mother enrolled me in Sunday
school. We were taught by rote, Bible verses and the words of Jesus.
Afterward we stood in line and were rewarded with a spoonful of comb
honey. There was only one spoon in the jar to serve many coughing
children. I instinctively shied from the spoon but I swiftly accepted
the notion of God. It pleased me to imagine a presence above us, in
continual motion, like liquid stars.
Not contented with my child?s prayer, I soon petitioned my
mother to let me make my own. I was relieved when I no longer had
to repeat the words If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my
soul to take and could say instead what was in my heart. Thus freed, I
would lie in my bed by the coal stove vigorously mouthing long let-
ters to God. I was not much of a sleeper and I must have vexed him
with my endless vows, visions, and schemes. But as time passed I came
to experience a different kind of prayer, a silent one, requiring more
listening than speaking.
My small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of
expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of
imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers
of influenza, measles, chicken pox, and mumps. I had them all and
with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep
within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, inten-
sifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of
heaven?s kaleidoscope.
My love of prayer was gradually rivaled by my love for the
book. I would sit at my mother?s feet watching her drink coffee and
smoke cigarettes with a book on her lap. Her absorption intrigued
me. Though not yet in nursery school, I liked to look at her books,
feel their paper, and lift the tissues from the frontispieces. I wanted to
know what was in them, what captured her attention so deeply. When
my mother discovered that I had hidden her crimson copy of Foxe ?s
Book of Martyrs beneath my pillow, with hopes of absorbing its mean-
ing, she sat me down and began the laborious process of teaching me
to read. With great effort we moved through Mother Goose to Dr.
Seuss. When I advanced past the need for instruction, I was permit-
ted to join her on our overstuffed sofa, she reading The Shoes of the
Fisherman and I The Red Shoes.
I was completely smitten by the book. I longed to read them all,
and the things I read of produced new yearnings. Perhaps I might go
off to Africa and offer my ser-vices
to Albert Schweitzer or, decked in
my coonskin cap and powder horn, I might defend the -people
like Davy
Crockett. I could scale the Himalayas and live in a cave spinning a prayer
wheel, keeping the earth turning. But the urge to express myself was my
strongest desire, and my siblings were my first eager coconspirators in
the harvesting of my imagination. They listened attentively to my stories willingly performed in my plays, and fought valiantly in my wars.
With them in my corner, anything seemed possible.
In the months of spring, I was often ill and so condemned to my
bed, obliged to hear my comrades at play through the open window.
In the months of summer, the younger ones reported bedside how
much of our wild field had been secured in the face of the enemy. We
lost many a battle in my absence and my weary troops would gather
around my bed and I would offer a benediction from the child sol-
dier?s bible, A Child?s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson.
In the winter, we built snow forts and I led our campaign, serving
as general, making maps and drawing out strategies as we attacked and
retreated. We fought the wars of our Irish grandfathers, the orange and
the green. We wore the orange yet knew nothing of its meaning. They
were simply our colors. When attention flagged, I would draw a truce
and visit my friend Stephanie. She was convalescing from an illness I
didn?t really understand, a form of leukemia. She was older than I, per-
haps twelve to my eight. I didn?t have much to say to her and was perhaps
little comfort, yet she seemed to delight in my presence. I believe that
what really drew me to her was not my good heart, but a fascination with
her belongings. Her older sister would hang up my wet garments and
bring us cocoa and graham crackers on a tray. Stephanie would lie back
on a mound of pillows and I would tell tall tales and read her comics.
I marveled at her comic-book collection, stacks of them earned from
a childhood spent in bed, every issue of Superman, Little Lulu, Classic
Comics, and House of Mystery. In her old cigar box were all the talis-
manic charms of 1953: a roulette wheel, a typewriter, an ice skater, the
red Mobil winged horse, the Eiffel Tower, a ballet slipper, and charms in
the shape of all forty-eight states. I could play with them endlessly and
sometimes, if she had doubles, she would give one to me.
I had a secret compartment near my bed, beneath the floorboards.
There I kept my stash?winnings from marbles, trading cards, reli-
gious artifacts I rescued from Catholic trash bins: old holy cards, worn
scapulars, plaster saints with chipped hands and feet. I put my loot
from Stephanie there. Something told me I shouldn?t take presents
from a sick girl, but I did and hid them away, somewhat ashamed.
I had promised to visit her on Valentine ?s Day, but I didn?t. My
duties as general to my troop of siblings and neighboring boys were
very taxing and there was heavy snow to negotiate. It was a harsh
winter that year. The following afternoon, I abandoned my post to sit
with her and have cocoa. She was very quiet and begged me to stay
even as she drifted off to sleep.
I rummaged through her jewel box. It was pink and when you
opened it a ballerina turned like a sugarplum fairy. I was so taken
with a particular skating pin that I slipped it in my mitten. I sat frozen
next to her for a long time, leaving silently as she slept. I buried the
pin amongst my stash. I slept fitfully through the night, feeling great
remorse for what I had done. In the morning I was too ill to go to
school and stayed in bed, ridden with guilt. I vowed to return the pin
and ask her to forgive me.
The following day was my sister Linda?s birthday, but there was
to be no party for her. Stephanie had taken a turn for the worse and
my father and mother went to a hospital to give blood. When they
returned my father was crying and my mother knelt down beside me
to tell me Stephanie had died. Her grief was quickly replaced with
concern as she felt my forehead. I was burning with fever.
Our apartment was quarantined. I had scarlet fever. In the fif-
ties it was much feared since it often developed into a fatal form
of rheumatic fever. The door to our apartment was painted yel-
low. Confined to bed, I could not attend Stephanie ?s funeral. Her
mother brought me her stacks of comic books and her cigar box of
charms. Now I had everything, all her treasures, but I was far too
ill to even look at them. It was then that I experienced the weight
of sin, even a sin as small as a stolen skater pin. I reflected on the
fact that no matter how good I aspired to be, I was never going
to achieve perfection. I also would never receive Stephanie ?s for-
giveness. But as I lay there night after night, it occurred to me that
it might be possible to speak with her by praying to her, or at least
ask God to intercede on my behalf.
Robert was very taken with this story, and sometimes on a cold, lan-
guorous Sunday he would beg me to recount it. ?Tell me the Stephanie
story,? he would say. I would spare no details on our long mornings
beneath the covers, reciting tales of my childhood, its sorrow and magic,
as we tried to pretend we weren?t hungry. And always, when I got to the
part where I opened the jewelry box, he would cry, ?Patti, no . . .?
We used to laugh at our small selves, saying that I was a bad
girl trying to be good and that he was a good boy trying to be bad.
Through the years these roles would reverse, then reverse again, until
we came to accept our dual natures. We contained opposing princi-
ples, light and dark.
I was a dreamy somnambulant child. I vexed my teachers with
my precocious reading ability paired with an inability to apply it
to anything they deemed practical. One by one they noted in my
reports that I daydreamed far too much, was always somewhere
else. Where that somewhere was I cannot say, but it often landed me
in the corner sitting on a high stool in full view of all in a conical
paper hat.
I would later make large detailed drawings of these humorously
humiliating moments for Robert. He delighted in them, seeming to
appreciate all the qualities that repelled or alienated me from others.
Through this visual dialogue my youthful memories became his.
I was unhappy when we were evicted from The Patch and had to
pack up to begin a new life in southern New Jersey. My mother gave
birth to a fourth child whom we all pitched in to raise, a sickly though
sunny little girl named Kimberly. I felt isolated and disconnected in
the surrounding swamps, peach orchards, and pig farms. I immersed
myself in books and in the design of an encyclopedia that only got as
far as the entry for Simón Bolívar. My father introduced me to science
fiction and for a time I joined him in investigating UFO activity in the
skies over the local square-dance hall, as he continually questioned the
source of our existence.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Just Kidsby Patti Smith Copyright © 2011 by Patti Smith. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Ecco; Reprint edition (November 2, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0060936223
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060936228
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 0.9 x 5.4 x 8.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Biographies of Artists, Architects & Photographers (Books)
- #70 in Women's Biographies
- #161 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Patti Smith is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released twelve albums, including Horses, which has been hailed as one of the top one hundred debut albums of all time by Rolling Stone.
Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her books include Just Kids, winner of the National Book Award in 2010, Wītt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Auguries of Innocence.
In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor given to an artist by the French Republic. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
In 1980, she married the musician Fred Sonic Smith in Detroit. They had a son, Jackson, and a daughter, Jesse. Smith resides in New York City.
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Well, I have. Patti Smith has not, at least not in the case of her exquisite new memoir, "Just Kids". The difference between me and her is that my attempts to transcend mere description when writing about my past always deflates either into senseless name dropping or banal "my summer vacation essay" style explorations, whereas Smith, in "Just Kids," transcends all the pitfalls of the memoir genre and tells a poignant tale of two struggling artists in the late 60s - 70s in New York City--her and Robert Mapplethorpe--without sounding pompous, pretentious or boring.
It's always the inexplicable that's most interesting. If you strip away what's ineffable about the spirit of a defining period of time you are left mainly with the banal: eating, sitting, hanging out, arguing, making money, paying rent, and so on. That's why memoirs are so difficult to execute and only a talented writer tempered with restraint, such as Patti Smith, can adequately do the genre any justice.
As I was reading "Just Kids" I was continually struck with just how easy this book could have degenerated into a self-absorbed, indulgent tale of bohemianism and name dropping. The story itself is set up to lend itself to this sort of abuse. The fact is that Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were in New York City during an especially vibrant and exciting time for art and artists and otherwise bohemian types. The beats, rock and roll, which was still relatively new and exciting, Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground: the list goes on: see, I'm name dropping; it's hard not to do!
Instead, Smith uses a contemplative voice to recount her and Mapplethorpe's travails as they both went from two unknown starving artists to the great stars they later became. Where it could have been an appallingly boring story of braggadocio, such as telling the story of their ascendancy from front of the house to the "round table" at Max's Kansas City, instead is done masterfully through Smith's self-depreciation and reluctance.
As much as the reader gets an insight into Robert Mapplethorpe, his personality, sexuality, and art, he still never lets the mystery of his character bleed through, certainly not a two dimensional character. In a way, he's the one holding the reader in suspense throughout the book. This demonstrates just how talented Smith was to carry this off--and how telling! for it was ultimately Smith who never completely came to an understanding of him. For instance, on numerous occasions she states her bewilderment at a finished piece of art, or his subject matter (the gay S&M underworld of New York City, e.g.) or the sudden choices he would make, for instance running off to San Francisco. The true nature of the cohesion in their relationship was not in the things Mapplethorpe did, per se, but in the transparency of the processes behind Mapplethorpe's art and life. Isn't it the processes of an artist that other artists are most drawn to?
In some key ways, the two were very different. He was supremely ambitious and she was content at creating her art in obscurity, at least in the beginning. In a way, she was the grounding figure, ultimately benefiting him with some stability, whereas he was the ambitious figure ultimately benefiting her with some will to achieve. What a perfect match! They were each other's greatest champions! and it's this element that is the most important narrative thread throughout the book. Could they have done it without each other?
Smith's perspective on this fascinating period in New York's art-bohemian scene is insightful. Having an avid interest in this cultural phenomenon, I especially enjoyed it. I am familiar with many of the people who fill these pages and the intimacy with which Smith tells the story brings me closer to their cultural milieu.
In the end, the two (as happens so often in life) drifted apart: not out of transgression, betrayal, loss of interest, but because they were maturing and finding their own ways to carry on the art and life they dreamed of together, that they promised one another they would never abandon. She eventually moved to Detroit to marry Fred Sonic Smith of MC5 and he stayed in NYC.
The last chapter describing Mapplethorpe's death and Smith's presence during it is nothing less than heart wrenching. I knew it was coming, but was not prepared for the impact his death would have on me that afternoon. This is where Smith really shines! Her tender ruminations on the dying and death of her lover and friend, her soul mate, is perfect. She adroitly straddles the line between sentimentality and description masterfully, never letting you stray too far into the sadness of it (as she did not let herself get lost in the despair of his death) while also avoiding mere description, leaving you to perhaps, say to yourself: "Ah, drag," close the book and go on about your business. This book sticks with you.
As a side note: God! how I would have loved being there in New York City at this time! I grew up in North Jersey in the seventies. I was too young to have had access to NYC during most of the period discussed in this book. But, even if I did, I was unlucky to have been a philistine Jersey redneck (which is different than any other redneck, but not necessarily in a good way). I did actually go to NYC often in the late-late 70s and early 80s, but thought it was bohemian enough to walk around the West Village and hang out in Washington Square Park doing whippets until one in the morning. How sad. What a squandered opportunity! Oh well, I guess there's a reason why I went to diesel school, instead. Reading Patti Smith's book, at least, allowed me to live vicariously for awhile.
I also recommend seeing Patti Smith live. She drew blood for us, literally. I will never forget her.
It details Patti Smith's evolution from tentative neophyte to rock-and-roll poetess, woven through with her unique relationship to Robert Mapplethorpe, a triumphant artist whose own untimely ending, alas, makes for engaging literature.
The place is lower Manhattan. The time-period is the mid-1960s and 1970s when Mapplethorpe and Smith are, age-wise, a "beat behind" the reigning princes and princesses of rock's golden age.
As such, she is influenced artistically by the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and Janice Joplin for whom she pens poetic cycles while absorbing political pointers from Jean-Luc Goddard's "One-Plus-One."
The life-as-artist anecdotes have a familiar ring: hunger, rejection, perseverance, and a healthy amount of name dropping.
Smith has affairs with Jim Carroll, Sam Sheppard and a guy from Blue Oyster Cult. Allen Ginsberg mistakes her for a pretty boy in the Automat, and Gregory Corso imparts stern advice to the budding scribe inside her.
They are revealing tales that highlight Smith's achievement as survivor of an era peopled with fascinating characters demolished by addictions and carelessness.
"Just Kids" is the portrait of a New York City not completely subsumed into the grid of overpriced realty, before the Internet, where artistic ambition had a geographic component and required settling into some dump on the mighty Isle.
Here is "art" before its subsequent elevation to bourgeois respectability. To an artist of today's saturated market, the idea that you could install yourself at the Chelsea Hotel and initiate apprenticeships with living legends seems, with the benefit of hindsight, a no-brainer.
One can only assume that, in those days, choosing art meant the painful burden of rejection from loved ones and dangerous uncertainty on the path ahead.
So, as time capsule, "Just Kids" is just great.
But autobiographies should tell us something we don't know about somebody. They can be intriguing when it comes to artists, because they are usually reinvented characters very mindful of their own brands, of what they show and don't show the world.
And who does Patti Smith tell us who she is/was?
For starters, because it's really how she got it going, Patti Smith is/was American as apple pie; thrifty, industrious, entrepreneurial, and self-involved, her Rimbaud-inspired disdain and punk rock posture notwithstanding.
Here Smith describes her efforts in the opening stanzas of the couple's bohemian idyll:
"I scoured secondhand stores for books to sell. I had a good eye, scouting rare children's books and signed first editions for a few dollars and reselling them for much more. The turnover on a pristine copy of 'Love and Mr. Lewisham' inscribed by H.G. Wells covered rent and subway fares for a week."
And she is a fashionista of the first rank.
Long before Patti Smith was confident enough to confront an imposing poetry world, she parsed a personal vocabulary in clothing ensembles that, 30 years on, she remembers down to the last accessory.
In this passage she describes a successful attempt at sartorially seducing Television guitar-star Tom Verlaine to work with her band:
"I dressed in a manner that I thought a boy from Delaware would understand: black ballet flaps, pink shantung capris, my kelly green silk raincoat, and a violet parasol, and entered Cinemabilia where he worked part time."
And she is materialistic. Not flat-screen TV materialistic, for sure, but tightly tied to and moved by objects tactile and tangible.
Before joining Mapplethorpe for a photography shoot she, "laid a cloth on the floor, placing the fragile white dress Robert had given me, my white ballet shoes, Indian ankle bells, silk ribbons, and the family Bible, and tied it all in a bundle."
During the shoot she is stricken with anxiety that is eased by Mapplethorpe's knowing voice and a change into dungarees, boots, an old black sweatshirt.
Smith interprets this evolution as an expression of certain ideas she and the photographer have discussed prior. Ideas about the artist seeking contact with the gods, but returning to the world for the purpose of making things.
Her conclusion to the section does not surprise: "I left Mephistopheles, the angels, and the remnants of our hand-made world, saying, 'I choose Earth.'"
As for Mapplethorpe, especially if you're a foot soldier in the art world, he seems a rather common phenomenon: ambitious and single-minded in his craving for fame. Patti's lazy percolation into what she would ultimately become makes for an infinitely more interesting yarn.
One gets the feeling he might agree. In one of the most charming parts of the book he tells her through a cloud of cigarette smoke, "Patti, you got famous before me."
She dubs Mapplethorpe her "knight," but this reader cared thanks to the love she invested in him.
Mapplethorpe, of course, was an artist and all the writing about art in the world cannot replace the actual experience of it. Perhaps he is shortchanged by the autobiographical form; try as his muse does to honor him.
Although we rarely accuse anybody of being too old to rock 'n roll anymore, writing remains a mature person's game. So it was Smith's good fortune to be a writer first, a musician later, and a writer now, because she brings lit-passion and a high level of skill to "Just Kids."
This is especially true towards the end of the book. In earlier stanzas she is more a chronicler of the famous and idiosyncratic characters surrounding. When the poetess describes the artistic vision, purpose, and goals upon which she ultimately settles, the narrative assumes the force of that direction:
"We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it was losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone."
Pretty grandiose stuff.
But she is, in "Just Kids," nothing if not a dramatist scripting the play of her own life, decorating it with universal symbols, inserting Patti Smith into art history's larger arc.
There are persons and outlets, many in the cultural current Smith helped generate, who find such self-positioning both cloying and pretentious.
Not highwayscribery.
Worms squirm in the mud and we are all welcome to join them. Walking with the deities is the tougher task and should be worthy of our admiration.
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Reviewed in Brazil on February 28, 2023