Patti Smith

Winner of the 2010 Non-Fiction National Book Award Patti Smith's evocative, honest and moving coming-of-age story of her extraordinary relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe

Just Kids

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.

Grace McCarter

It’s good, he thought, ruefully. For no one would see what he had seen. No one would understand. He was accustomed to this feeling – he had had it all his life – but in the past he tried to make up for it. As if it was his fault.

Aina

"What's the blackest thing you've ever seen?" asked Sam.

"An eclipse?" I said, as if in answer to a riddle.

"No." He pointed at the photograph. "It's this. A black you can get lost in."

Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?

I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.

Sebastian Stockmarr

I was in a Beat humor. The Bibles were piled in small stacks. The Holy Barbarians. The Angry Young Men. Rummaging around, I found some poems by Ray Bremser. He really got me going. Ray had that human saxophone thing. You could feel his improvisational ease the way language spilled out like linear notes. Inspired, I put on some Coltrane but nothing good happened. I was just jacking off. Truman Capote once accused Kerouac of typing, not writing. But Kerouac infused his being onto rolls of Teletype paper, banging on his machine. Me, I was typing. I leapt up frustrated.

At twenty years old, I boarded the bus. I wore my dungarees, black turtleneck, and the old gray raincoat I had bought in Camden. My small suitcase, yellow-and-red plaid, held some drawing pencils, a notebook, Illuminations, a few pieces of clothing, and pictures of my siblings. I was superstitious. Today was a Monday; I was born on Monday. It was a good day to arrive in New York City. No one expected me. Everything awaited me.

💌

We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn’t want to be without each other.

Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed.

It leads to each other. We become ourselves.

In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.

I have lived for love, I have lived for Art. I closed my eyes and folded my hands. Providence determined how I would say goodbye.

cheyanne

On other days, we would visit art museums. There was only enough money for one ticket, so one of us would go in, look at the exhibits, and report back to the other.

On one such occasion, we went to the relatively new Whitney Museum on the Upper East Side. It was my turn to go in, and I reluctantly entered without him. I no longer remember the exhibit, but I do recall peering through one of the museum's unique trapezoidal windows, seeing Robert across the street, leaning against a parking meter, smoking a cigarette.

He waited for me, and as we headed toward the subway he said, "One day we'll go in together, and the work will be ours." 

I was particularly moved by the drawing he had done on Memorial Day. I had never seen anything like it. What also struck me was the date: Joan of Arc's feast day. The same day I had promised to make something of myself before her statue.

I told him this, and he responded that the drawing was symbolic of his own commitment to art, made on the same day. He gave it to me without hesitation and I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.

For just a couple dollars we both got lucky. We headed home holding hands. For a moment I dropped back to watch him walk. His sailor's gait always touched me. I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart.

Silva

He wondered, as he rested his head on my shoulder if I would have been better off if I hadn't come back. But I did come back. In the end we were better off together.

clara

Perhaps it was an awareness of time passing, the last summer of the decade. Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.

But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.

Our lives were moving at such speed that we just kept going.

Something in the change of the weather marked a change in myself as well.

We were both praying for Robert's soul, he to sell it and I to save it.

We looked down at our hands, each holding on to the other. We took a deep breath, accepting our complicity, not in theft, but in the destruction of a work of art.

"At least they'll never get it," he said.

This did take me 10 months to read but it was so beautiful and genuinely changed the way I view art. Rest in peach Robert Mapplethorpe

Cate

Takes a while to get going. Then looks all set to culminate in the grand finale that is ‘Land’. And finally Patti hits you in the feels with the goodbye track. 

Frederik De Bosschere

First biography I ever read, and first biography I would recommend. Beautifully written, perfectly reflective and like a warm hug you didn’t know you need. It was sad without it being tragic- a beautiful kind of sorrow that connects people to art, life, and one another. A perfect example on love, loss, celebration and grief.

Indi

Such a beautiful life dedicated to art in all its ways. Infinite cool cat name dropping and naïveté. The whole thing somewhere between poetry and autobiography.

Willa

Augh! energetic and filled with care, impressive pacing that alternately pulled me through and demanded that I slow down. this book is making me make more art

August Stone

rereading this is such a whirl!!!! like the intense nostalgia i am feeling and also joy at rediscovering the whimsy that is patti smith’s literary world- it’s made me excited to reread all her other stuff because im remembering that what i love more than anything about her writing is the way talks about cafes and having a coffee and doughnut at the beach and i feel like im 16 again in awe at her and her words. i could ramble loads about this but ill save that for my journal

update: i defo feel different rereading this now with fresh eyes. i loved the first quarter but found most of the middle section a little tiresome. i’ll always love how patti smith writes - she weaves words in incredibly ways- but it felt more arrogant and restrictive than i remembered,  i feel like she holds back a lot and i wished there was more emotion.  

lara anand

rereading this is such a whirl!!!! like the intense nostalgia i am feeling and also joy at rediscovering the whimsy that is patti smith’s literary world- it’s made me excited to reread all her other stuff because im remembering that what i love more than anything about her writing is the way talks about cafes and having a coffee and doughnut at the beach and i feel like im 16 again in awe at her and her words. i could ramble loads about this but ill save that for my journal

update: i defo feel different rereading this now with fresh eyes. i loved the first quarter but found most of the middle section a little tiresome. i’ll always love how patti smith writes - she weaves words in incredibly ways- but it felt more arrogant and restrictive than i remembered,  i feel like she holds back a lot and i wished there was more emotion.  



Karmen 

“No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together.”


incredibly raw and personal, i couldn’t get enough of patti smith’s writing. it may take some time for me to move on from this.

moved me to tears. such a poignant writer. 

Teresa Bonifácio

This book is about love. Love between Patti and Robert. It is also about art, and the passion of making art. It's about sacrifice. This book has the capacity of transporting you to the 70's. It has the capacity of making you imagine about being Patti Smith in that time. Of meeting Robert Mapplethorpe and with him living that life. Living at the Chelsea Hotel. Meeting Janis Jopling, Sandy Pearlman, Jimi Hendrix and so more.

It was my first Patti Smith book but it won't be my last.

Maria

so tender and full of love and understanding! the writing was so vivid, i almost felt like i was there too in the new york of patti and robert and all the other artists they’ve met. im not much of a memoires reader, but this felt so much like a long conversation with a friend

ellie 💐💌⭐️

C'était l'été de la mort de Coltrane, l'été de l'amour et des émeutes, quand une rencontre fortuite à Brooklyn guida deux jeunes gens dans la vie de bohème, sur la voie de l'art. Patti Smith et Robert Mapplethorpe avaient vingt ans ; elle deviendrait poète et performeuse, il serait photographe. A cette époque d'intense créativité, les univers de la poésie, du rock and roll et du sexe s'entrechoquent. Le couple fréquente la cour d'Andy Warhol, intègre au Chelsea Hotel une communauté d'artistes et de marginaux hauts en couleur, croise Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, Lou Reed... Just Kids commence comme une histoire d'amour et finit comme une élégie, brossant un inoubliable instantané du New York des années 1960-1970. Avec pudeur et émotion, Patti Smith retrace l'ascension de deux gamins inséparables qui insufflèrent à leur vie la même énergie qu'à leur art.

Just kids

Noah

Je sais pas trop ce qui m’a pris tant de temps à finir le tout dernier quart du livre. 

Il y a un moment où tu n’as pas d’autre choix que d’être emporté dans son journal à elle, page après page, jour après jour, et il y a cette relation de confidence qui se crée. Elle m’a beaucoup inspirée, on veut tous être Patti Smith d’une manière ou d’une autre. 

Mais un jour il est temps de se détacher du quotidien de Patti et d’emporter avec soi toutes les idées qui ont germées en l’accompagnant. Alors voilà, quelque part entre le 19 septembre et aujourd’hui il a été temps pour moi de me concentrer sur ma vie et de m’affairer à la traverser moi.

Isabella 

reading this transported me to their time and it felt like i was with them. however, i did not really connect to it the way i expected it to, given all the love this receives. its beautifully crafted tho

giulia

"I'm certain, as we filed down the great staircase, that I appeared the same as ever, a moping twelve-year-old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not."

reneé amelia 

annalyse! 

this book is the embodiment of love. i feel very heavy, but in the most flightless way.. absolutely incredible. ✦

“No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together.”

incredibly raw and personal, i couldn’t get enough of patti smith’s writing. it may take some time for me to move on from this.

“No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together.”

incredibly raw and personal, i couldn’t get enough of patti smith’s writing. it may take some time for me to move on from this.

jack

Ryan 

désirée

“Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed. I stood looking at the sky. The clouds were the colours of a Raphael. A wounded rose. I had the sensation he had painted it himself. You will see him. You will know him. You will know his hand.” this book had me slowly crying for days and days. beautiful. a real life story full of movement and inspiration. giving this to my dad next.

i LOVED this so much ❤️❤️‍🩹💔

Just Kids

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