Total Page : 224
Publisher : Ecco
Publication Date : 2010 11 01
>> Fascinating read even for non fans
I m not the biggest Patti Smith fan in fact I don t even own any of her music Yet after Rolling Stone ran an excerpt from this book I had to get it It s a fantastic read poetic yet accessible much like Patti herself Highly recommended
>> Read this book in 24 hours
Great story of the beginning/evolution of an artist I could not put this book down The story flows so beautifully it deserves all its accolades
>> A highwayscribery Book Report
Just Kids is just another Jersey factory girl runs to New York and hooks up with bisexual art pornographer on her way to rock n roll stardom story
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 and 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 started 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 stanza s 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
Here 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 or 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
