Year of the Monkey
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- 75,00 kr
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids
'Magical' GUARDIAN
'A gripping tale of the search for meaning in times of turbulence - expressed with Smith's signature poetic flair' VOGUE
'Extraordinary ... A tense, teasing mix of reality and dream' SUNDAY TIMES
'Her willingness to look closely at life's closing chapters makes for a magical book' WASHINGTON POST, 'The 10 books to read in September'
Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding signs, including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat.
In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, "Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey." For Patti Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.
Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places - this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment. But as Patti Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope of a better world.
Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As she wanders between waking and dreaming in a year filled with the death of a close friend and the political turmoil of the 2016 election, musician and National Book Award winner Smith (Just Kids) contemplates dreams and reality in this luminous collection of anecdotes and photos. In light of her 70th birthday, Smith writes lyrically on various subjects: she describes Allen Ginsberg's poetry which she carries along her travels as an "expansive hydrogen bomb, containing all the nuances of his voice." On the "terrible soap opera called the American election," she declares that "the bully bellowed. Silence ruled... All hail our American apathy, all hail the twisted wisdom of the Electoral College." Watching a Belinda Carlisle video, she's caught up in Carlisle's infectious beat, and she imagines a "nonviolent hubris spreading across the land." At one point, Smith learns from a stranger that, in dreams, "equations are solved in an entirely unique way, laundry stiffens in the wind, and our dead mothers appear with their backs turned." Smith discovers that her most meaningful insights come from her vivid dreams, and she feels a palpable melancholia over having to wake up from them. Smith casts a mesmerizing spell with exquisite prose.
