Just Kids
A National Book Award Winner
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4.4 • 983 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We’ve always loved Patti Smith’s intense, poetic lyrics, but she was never a confessional songwriter. Yet Smith’s witty, heartbreaking memoir of her artistic birth in ’70s Greenwich Village is as exposed as a raw nerve. Just Kids chronicles the singer’s troubled New Jersey childhood, the emotional draw of music and poetry, and her enduring friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Smith’s warmhearted, wistful prose belies the relentless energy and yearning that underpins her fearless and inspiring music. Straight up, this is one of the best music memoirs ever written.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1967, 21-year-old singer song writer Smith, determined to make art her life and dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities in Philadelphia to live this life, left her family behind for a new life in Brooklyn. When she discovered that the friends with whom she was to have lived had moved, she soon found herself homeless, jobless, and hungry. Through a series of events, she met a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe who changed her life and in her typically lyrical and poignant manner Smith describes the start of a romance and lifelong friendship with this man: "It was the summer Coltrane died. Flower children raised their arms... and Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey. It was the summer of Elvira Madigan, and the summer of love...." This beautifully crafted love letter to her friend (who died in 1989) functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by a passion for art and writing. Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York as she shares tales of the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's, and Strand bookstores. In the lobby of the Chelsea, where she and Mapplethorpe lived for many years, she got to know William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Johnny Winter. Most affecting in this tender and tough memoir, however, is her deep love for Mapplethorpe and her abiding belief in his genius. Smith's elegant eulogy helps to explain the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpe's life and work.
Customer Reviews
A natural writer
Patti employs a poetic economy with her words that drives the story along nicely.
Her memory for the details of that long ago era is remarkable, helped, no doubt by the diary that she kept all those years.
She is a true artist that never sold out for fame or money. Her performance of Because the Night with Bruce Springsteen this year at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was the highlight of an already stellar show.
Patti, please bring on Volume 2 when you are ready.
Patti Smith
I’m glad you guys enjoyed my book.
Totally Captivated
I haven't read a book in a long time, maybe ever, that had such a profound effect on me as Just Kids did. I was completely immersed in the story of Patti Smith's life and hung on to every detail. She took romantic to an entirely new level. I am completely fascinated and deeply touched by the lifestyle of her and Robert Mappelthorpe. It's difficult to explain, but this book has made me appreciate life more and all of the wonderful things that are possible and the extent of human emotion. I appreciated Patti Smith's realness. She wasn't fueled by drugs, but rather by the beauty of life. The relationship that formed between Patti and Robert was truly inspiring. To witness first hand that soul mates do exist. It was sometimes hard to believe that I was reading about someone's real life because that is how interesting the events were. As far as portraying the times and the characters during which the events of the story unfolded, I couldn't imagine a better presentation. I was deeply moved by Just Kids and sad at the end, not only because of the tragic nature of the story, but that I had no more of the wonderful tale to read.