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Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Hardcover – Deckle Edge, January 19, 2010
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WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
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.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherEcco
- Publication dateJanuary 19, 2010
- Dimensions6 x 1.09 x 9 inches
- ISBN-10006621131X
- ISBN-13978-0066211312
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Review
“[Just Kids] reminds us that innocence, utopian ideals, beauty and revolt are enlightenment’s guiding stars in the human journey. Her book recalls, without blinking or faltering, a collective memory ― one that guides us through the present and into the future.” — Michael Stipe, Time magazine
“Reading rocker Smith’s account of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, it’s hard not to believe in fate. How else to explain the chance encounter that threw them together, allowing both to blossom? Quirky and spellbinding.” — People, Top 10 Books of 2010
“The most enchantingly evocative memoir of funky-but-chic New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s that any alumnus has yet committed to print.” — Janet Maslin's top 10 books of 2010, New York Times
“Composed of incandescent sentences more revelatory than anything from Patti Smith’s poems or songs, her romantic memoir also reveals what blunt narrative instruments the earlier career bios of her and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe have been.” — Village Voice, Best Books of 2010 Round-Up
“Smith’s beautifully crafted love letter to her friend Robert Mapplethorpe functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by passion for art and writing. Her elegant eulogy lays bare the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpe’s life and work.” — Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Books of the Year
“Poetically written and vividly remembered. [Smith] reminded me of the idealism of art.” — Matthew Weiner, creator of MAD MEN, in New York magazine
“A spellbinding portrait of bohemian New York in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.” — New York Times Book Review, Paperback Row
“One of the best things I’ve ever read in my life.” — Don Imus
“Sometimes there is justice in the world. That was my first thought when I heard that Patti Smith had won the National Book Award this fall for her glorious memoir, Just Kids.” — Maureen Corrigan's favorite books of 2010, NPR's Fresh Air
“[JUST KIDS] offers a revealing account of the fears and insecurities harbored by even the most incendiary artists, as well as their capacity for reverence and tenderness.” — USA Today
“Smith’s writing about her early days with Mapplethorpe is fervid and incantatory but never falls into incoherence.” — The Oregonian (Portland)
“A heartbreakingly sweet recollection of just that sort of vanished Bohemian life...Just as [Smith] stands out as an artiste in a movement based on collectivism, her singular voice gleams among rock memoirs as a work of literature.” — Boston Globe
“Just Kids shows how Smith integrated the romance of her twenty-year friendship with Mapplethorpe with her historical preoccupations, elevating them to an almost sacred status. The past, for Smith, has always driven her life forward. If only we could all be so free-spirited.” — The Rumpus
“Patti Smith’s telling of the years she spent with Robert Mapplethorpe is full of optimism sprinkled with humor...JUST KIDS...is sorely lacking in irony or cynicism; Smith’s worldview is infectious. She’s a jumble of influences, but that’s part of her charm.” — Austin American-Statesman
“A moving portrait of the artist as a young woman, and a vibrant profile of Smith’s onetime boyfriend and lifelong muse, Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989...JUST KIDS is ultimately a wonderful portal into the dawn of Smith’s art.” — Los Angeles Times
“A remarkable book --sweet and charming and many other words you wouldn’t expect to apply to a punk-rock icon.” — Newsday
” A story of art, identity, devotion, discovery, and love, the book is [Smith’s] first prose work...[it] conjures up the passionate collaboration--as lovers, friends, soul mates, and creators--that she and Mapplethorpe embarked on from the summer they met in Brooklyn in 1967.” — Elle
“Deeply affecting...a vivid portrayal of a bygone New York that could support a countercultural artistic firmament...the power of this book comes from [Smith’s] ability to recall lucid memories in straightforward prose.” — BookForum
“Funny, fascinating, oddly tender.” — O, The Oprah Magazine
“Patti Smith’s memoir of her youth with Robert Mapplethorpe testifies to a rare and ferocious innocence...’Just Kids’ is a book utterly lacking in irony or sophisticated cynicism.” — Salon.com
“A shockingly beautiful book...a classic, a romance about becoming an artist in the city, written in a spare, simple style of boyhood memoirs like Frank Conroy’s ‘Stop Time.’” — New York Magazine
“[A] beautifully crafted love letter to [Robert Mapplethorpe]...Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York...[a] tender and tough memoir...[an] elegant eulogy.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Riveting and exquisitely crafted.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Captivating....a poignant requiem...and a radiant celebration of life. Grade: A.” — Entertainment Weekly
“More than 30 years after its release, Horses still has the power to shock and inspire young musicians to express themselves with unbridled passion. Now she brings the same raw, lyrical quality to her first book of prose.” — Clive Davis, Vanity Fair
“In the end, [JUST KIDS is] not just an ode to Mapplethorpe, but a love letter to New York City’s ‘70s art scene itself.” — Time Out New York
“The most compelling memoir by a rock artist since Bob Dylan’s ‘Chronicles: Volume One,’ written with intimacy and grace....” — Chicago Tribune
“Astonishing on many levels, most notably for Smith’s lapidary prose....[JUST KIDS] is simply one of the best memoirs to be published in recent years: inspiring, sad, wise and beautifully written.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“[JUST KIDS] is funny and sad but always exhilarating.” — Tampa Tribune
“Terrifically evocative and splendidly titled...the most spellbinding and diverting portrait of funky-but-chic New York in the late ’60s and early ’70s that any alumnus has committed to print....This enchanting book is a reminder that not all youthful vainglory is silly; sometimes it’s preparation.” — New York Times Book Review
“A touching tale of love and devotion.” — Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers
“JUST KIDS describes [Smith and Mapplethorpe’s] ascent with a forthright sweetness that will ring true to anyone who knows her work.” — Bloomberg.com
“To read JUST KIDS is to be struck by how powerfully the two, especially Smith, believed in the power of art....Despite her music’s angry clamor, despite his sometimes revolting images, Smith and Mapplethorpe retain, in her telling, a primal, childlike innocence.” — Dallas Morning News
“One of the best books ever written on becoming an artist...Jesus may have died for somebody’s sins, but Patti Smith lives and writes and sings for all of us.” — Washington Post
“Remarkable, evocative... JUST KIDS is more than just a gift to [Smith’s] ex-lover; it’s a gift to everyone who has ever been touched by their art, and to everyone who’s ever been in love. Like the best of Smith’s music and Mapplethorpe’s art, this book is haunting and unforgettable.” — NPR Boston
“A revelation. In a spellbinding memoir as notable for its restraint as for its lucidity, its wit as well as its grace, Smith tells the story of how she and Robert Mapplethorpe found each other... beautifully crafted, vivid, and indelible.” — Booklist
“An utterly charming, captivating, intimate portrait of a late 1960s and early 1970s period of intense artistic ferment in downtown Manhattan significantly shaped and keenly observed by rock firebrand Smith.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
“Smith lovingly depicts the denizens of the Chelsea Hotel - is that Janis Joplin at the bar? - and the rock club CBGB, all the while pondering how to be an uncompromising artist who nonetheless needs to pay the rent.” — Boston Globe
“Possibly the most spellbinding account of New York in the ‘70’s ever written." — Dua Lipa
From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Ecco; Illustrated edition (January 19, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 006621131X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0066211312
- Item Weight : 1.27 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.09 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #41,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #90 in Rock Band Biographies
- #456 in Women's Biographies
- #1,409 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Patti Smith is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released twelve albums, including Horses, which has been hailed as one of the top one hundred debut albums of all time by Rolling Stone.
Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her books include Just Kids, winner of the National Book Award in 2010, Wītt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Auguries of Innocence.
In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor given to an artist by the French Republic. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
In 1980, she married the musician Fred Sonic Smith in Detroit. They had a son, Jackson, and a daughter, Jesse. Smith resides in New York City.
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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.
”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 reviews from other countries
Reviewed in Brazil on February 28, 2023
The world shifting around pattie as the years go by feels brutal but honest. She does a phenomenal work of letting us peek through a window into a time that was fleeting yet so remarkable for every heart in the room. Her writting did justice to everyone whom art has taken.
One of the best i've ever read.