Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner

4.5 Stars ”It was the summer Coltrane died. The summer of “Crystal Ship.” Flower children raised their empty arms and China exploded the H-bomb. Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey. AM radio played “Ode to Billie Joe.” There were riots in Newark, Milwaukee, and Detroit. It was the summer of Elvira Madigan, the summer of love. And in this shifting, inhospitable atmosphere, a chance encounter change the course of my life.” It was that summer when Patti Smith met Robert Mapplethorpe. Just Kids is a love story of these two young people who, against all odds, meet, fall in love, and cling to that love long after they’ve chosen other partners, other ways of life, and love. It’s a love story of the city where they fell in love, and perhaps even a bit of a love story to the art and poetry and music that was created in the course of their love story. They combined their meager possessions, but money was problematic, they barely made enough money for food – and frequently went without. Extras were out of reach. Books they had already owned were their prized possessions, as was their music limited to those albums they’d brought into this relationship. And still, they were able to enjoy some concerts just by virtue of being in the right place at the right time, or knowing the right person. ”Yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods.” There are a very few years that they were not in touch, Smith’s focused on her music career, her marriage to Fred “Sonic” Smith, and Mapplethorpe focused on his art, his partner. Time passes, children come along, and when Smith is expecting a second child, they re-establish communication. ”We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was splendor we only partially imagined. No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together. Only Robert and I could tell it. Our story, as he called it. And having gone, he left the task for me to tell it to you.” I knew very little about Patti Smith, I knew who she was, is, and that I’ve heard some of her songs, knew she was a musician… beyond that, nothing. So, when this book first came out, and my brother sent me a signed copy of this, along with a few other books, and I vaguely recall seeing it and wondering why he sent it to me. And then, years later, also sent me a signed copy of M Train. I was beginning to feel a little guilty. I loved this. There’s a bit of that raw energy and the grittiness of living in their early days together, the descriptions of the city, especially at night. The Romeo and Julietness of it all. Beautiful prose. Their story reminded me of one of my favourite poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ”Sonnet XXX – Love Is Not All” ”Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.”

Top Dog Book Review: “Just Kids” by Patti Smith – This book has been sitting on my shelf for FAR too long. It is required reading for boomers born between 1945 and 1960 and anyone interested in the artistic cauldron that was New York City in the 60’s through the 80’s. It is about the long-standing relationship, friendship and devotion of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. Yeah, you may think you know Patti Smith, the G-L-O-R-I-A singer with the Keith Richard haircut and the snotty attitude. But you don’t know Patti. You may think you know Robert Mapplethorpe, he of the overtly sexual and overtly homosexual and S&M photographs. But you do not know Robert. This is a tale of art and artists. This is a tale of love and dedication. You know, there are all kinds of heroes. We have military heroes, but not everyone is cut out for military heroics. We have sports heroes, but not all of us are cut out for that, either. So, the best we all can do is to do what we can. This is NOT a discussion of the relative values of who does what. It is about realizing the full potential of whatever it is that you CAN be. And some people are artists. It can be a lonely life. A life filled with self-denial. How about a life where two people living together are hungry but they have enough money for only one hot dog and they split it? Do we spend money on art supplies or on food? And for what? Commercial success is far from a certainty. An early death is far more likely. “Nobody ever taught you how to live out on the street And now you’re gonna have to get used to it.” -- Bob Dylan This is a story about love. Deep, enduring, passionate love. Mutual respect. This is a lesson about value: that gifts from the heart far out value gifts with hefty price tags. Yes, I know that a lot of people out there are saying, “I’ll take the hefty price tag.” Part of me says, “then maybe this is NOT the book for you,” and another part of me says “then this IS the book for you.” Patti Smith’s writing is beautiful and skillful. She is, after all, a poet. She states at the end that there is much more to the story, but that this is the story that she chose to tell. It is not a biography. It is a love story; a real, true to life love story. So, maybe I’m in love with love. One more thing: there are those of us who love the music of Patti Smith and there is an adequate dose of that in the book. On page 245 are two sentences about her fears about music that I wish I had written: “We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it falling into a mire of spectacle, finance and vapid technological complexity.” So, this 62 year old curmudgeon says welcome to the world of “American Idol” and “The Voice” and today’s world of performance art with its visuals and its staging and woe be to any five pimple faced teenagers who get together in a garage knowing four guitar chords and wanting to make music. Thank you Patti Smith.

Me llegó mal cortado, eso no es un problema para mí, y fuera de eso es un buen libro

Patti smiths writting is quite different from what you would expect after having listened to her music for so long. You can notice she doesnt tell the stories in detail and has her privacy in mind but this, for me, leaves the impression that what IS being said is genuine. I am not sure if she has a ghost writer, but I dont really think so. Love the frank, almost innocent, manner in which the book has been written thus far, I am almost 2/3rd into it. The seller! The book did not arive by the time it should have, but the shop sent another, then both of them arrived at the same time, and the seller gave me the option of a refund or a big discount for late delivery etc. A great shop, to be fair. Sent the extra book back and refused the discount, Patti would be might proud.

Un libro stupendo, una scrittura super piacevole. Lo leggerei mille volte.

Really beautiful and touching book, which greatly exceeded my expectations. This isn't a book about Patti Smith, or her music, nor even about Robert Mapplethorpe, though obviously there's plenty about them and their work between these covers. It's a book about their relationship as artists and lovers as an entity in its own right, and as such it's one of the finest love stories you will ever read - a mostly platonic story for sure, but no less powerful for all that. You put the book down feeling that he was surely her 'other half', and she his - that they made one another whole, as people as well as artists. The writing is never sentimental, even when it's dealing with Robert's untimely end - it's crisp and hard-edged, but never prosaic, and the more powerful for it. Her recollections of tough times in New York around the turn of the 70s and growing up in places like the Chelsea Hotel and CBGBs before they became tourist destinations are captured with an artist's clear eye and are a valuable addition in themselves to other memoirs of those times. But it's the story of Robert and Patti that rightly dominates. A very moving, life-affirming memoir, and highly recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in their work and those times.

Tolles Buch, hab es mit Freude gelesen