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Just Kids: An Autobiography
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Original price was: $18.99.$11.49Current price is: $11.49.
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Due to copyright restrictions, this eBook may not contain all of the images available in the print edition.
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 infamousthe 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.
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Categories: Women Writers
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Just Kids: An Autobiography
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Original price was: $18.99.$11.49Current price is: $11.49.
CS –
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.”
Rybka Aleksandr –
Ok
Karl Jung –
What a great story and well written. Covers a very cool period of the NY budding rock scene from late ’60s to late ’70s and I loved her delivery. One of the better memoirs I’ve read.
Top Dog –
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.
Alex –
Patti Smith forjó una reputación formidable gracias a su actuación en el escenario + frente a la cámara cada vez que daba entrevistas. Pero detrás del grito rebelde yacía una persona de increíble calidez, buen humor + generosidad de espíritu.
A medida que crece en la “contracultura” escuchamos todo sobre sus aventuras, encuentros + influencias formativas. A los fanáticos del rock les encantará sus recuerdos de charlar con Jimi Hendrix pocos días antes de su muerte o la noche que pasó consolando a Janis Joplin cuando otro hombre la decepcionó. Si adoras a los escritores beatnick entonces te intriga aprender que uno de ellos una vez la confundió con un niño “bonito” + trató de recogerla!
Pero si Just Kids tiene algo que enseñarnos es seguramente que el Amor viene en muchas formas diferentes. Y en ese momento el Amor de su joven Vida era Robert Mapplethorpe. Sólo más tarde descubrió que era homosexual+ muy dispuesto a vender su cuerpo a hombres por sexo. Pero luego desarrolló un interés en Bondage + sadomasoquismo que él sostuvo que era totalmente artístico, pero la pobre Patti tenía sus dudas. Sin embargo, el vínculo (! ) entre ellos permaneció tan fuerte como siempre. Su Amor había sufrido un extraño cambio alquímico: ahora eran como hermano + hermana. Incluso cuando Robert estaba muriendo de SIDA un mayor, más maduro + ahora casado Patti seguía a su lado. Ella había tenido su primer hijo con Fred Sonic Smith y su segundo estaba en camino… viviendo dentro de ella mientras Robert yacía muriendo…
Como Patti tan bellamente lo dice: «Estábamos como Hansel + Gretel + nos aventuramos a la selva negra del mundo. Hubo tentaciones +brujas + demonios con los que nunca soñamos + había esplendor que sólo imaginamos parcialmente. Nadie podía hablar por estos 2 jóvenes ni contar verdades de sus días y noches juntos. Sólo Robert + podía decirlo. Y, habiendo ido, me dejó la tarea a mí…
Jadson –
Not being a connoisseur of Patti Smith’s songs I’ve always read about her and I’ve being well aware of her prominence in the world of arts. I knew she’s always been in love with Robert, but this book brought me the real history of their relationship as well as the early Patti’s biography as well. A nice read and I’ll start reading more of her books and listening to her songs.
Matilda –
have been really excited for this one! it came in very good condition and also arrived one day earlier than the ordered said!:)) super happy with my this book:)