Book Review: Just Kids by Patti Smith

It seems there is suddenly an amazing harvest of rock memoirs available. As a child of the 70's I grew up on rock and roll and as a teenager deeply regretted having missed the 60's. Now all the rebel stars I listened to have become the revered sages of our age; the hippies and freaks are now our tribal elders. And they are all rich and famous and impressively eloquent. Moved positions from "never trust anyone over 30" to modeling how hip 60 and even 70 can be. And now, like good elder statesmen and women, they are gifting us with their reminiscences.

My first foray into this field of literature was Patti Smith's memoir, which is about her very early years, how they lead to her meeting Robert Mapplethorpe, and how the two of them, deeply in love, became the nexus of the beat/rock/art scene in the last 60's and early 70's.

Part love story and tribute to Mapplethorpe, and part documentation of an era, the book flits between autobiography, eulogy to a lost love, and zeitgeist roman. And it is equally successful on all fronts.

First and foremost, from the first paragraph on, I was struck by Patti Smith's voice. I have been a fan of her music since my teens, and I still have her iconic "Horses" album in vinyl and her latest "12" digitally. I have turned many people on to her music.

But I knew nothing about her. Based on her raw, punk look and hoarse, expressive sprechstimme singing style, I just assumed she was a drugged out, possibly gay, hard living rocker. But this is not the woman who emerges from the book at all!

Wholesome, spiritual, deeply artistic, loyal, loving, nurturing and wholly without anger or rancor. She is warm, down to earth and utterly lyrical. Writing of her childhood in the late 40's and 50's, growing up in a very working class Catholic family, I see the world of post WWII that shaped her as well as her fervent religious heart, fascination with books and art, and burgeoning poet's sensibilities. Somehow it reminded me more of "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" than of the expected lurid rock star tells-all.

Her relationship with Mapplethorpe is beautifully portrayed. The absolute childlike love and devotion they shared for each other, the romance of their lives as artists living in what was—though the words were never used— abject poverty, and the wild and wonderful paths their lives followed until they eventually lead away from each other, to separate realizations of fame and glory. He discovers his homosexuality during their time together, but that does not detract from the purity of her love for him.

  Ms. Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe in 1969 (NY Times)

The description of the Chelsea hotel and its clientele, Max's Kansas City and the Warhol factory was sometimes lost on me because there are a lot of names—not all known to me. I had the feeling I was reading through a condensed version of an American Studies class that focused on that decade. It certainly would be a great text for that course, but without looking up every name as I read, I know some of the significance of this aspect of the book was lost on me.

Highly recommended—most of all for the sweetness (a quality I hadn't expected to find) of Patti Smith's voice and her depiction of the magic of her life. There was something almost prayerful between the covers as she shared the wonder and artistry of her generation, without hubris, only her truth. I felt like I would like to sit across a table from her and get lost in conversation, as if I could ever be so lucky...

 Patti Smith (from www.daysofthecrazy-wild.com_)

Addendum: A few days after writing this review I read Scott Turow interviewed in the New York Times Book Review, "When I noticed that Patti Smith’s “Just Kids” had won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2010, I ranted about contemporary culture, so celebrity-besotted that we were now giving vaunted literary prizes to rock stars. Then I read the book. It is profound and unique, a perfectly wrought account of what it means to give your life to art and to another person. I expect it to be read with wonder for a long time." Amen.