Just Kids

I came to Patti Smith early, but also slowly.

In 8th grade something drew me to a copy of her poems, Babel. I think it was at Colliseum Books. There was a picture of her on the cover that seemed empirically cool. I just felt something. I loved the poems and did an English class project on the book. I also bought a copy of the album Horses. Unfortunately, I found it weird and difficult to listen to. In high school I would listen to it occasionally, but could really only deal with "Redondo Beach" and "Kimberly".

Then when I was a sophomore in college a friend made me listen to Wave, saying that it reminded her of me.

I was transported. Elevated. Hooked. Patti Smith forever. The more I exposed myself to her, the more amazed I was with the brilliance of her art. As I blogged here, Dream of Life is one of the most beautiful "documentaries" ever made.

So I've been meaning to read Just Kids since it came out at the beginning of this year to rave reviews.

I gobbled it up on my Kindle. I have to say, between my adoration and the amazing things I had heard about it, I was slightly disappointed. Just Kids isn't as artistically beautiful or successful as I had hoped. It's a very, very good memoir of a unique and historically important friendship. A portrait of two young artists in the midst of an historic and wonderful cultural moment. The downtown music and art scene in NY in the late 60s and 70s. It's especially interesting in the way it chronicles the development of Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith as young artists. It's a good read. In a way kind of an important read.

But for the most part the prose is kind of flat. A memoir of her intense, romantic and artistic friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, the two brilliant youths at the heart of the story always seemed somewhat remote to me. Something was missing.

Still, in spite of not loving it, I loved it. I was bawling as I read the last few pages chronicling Mapplethorpe's illness and death.

She ends:
"Why can't I write something that would awake the dead?That pursuit is what burns me most deeply. I got over the loss of his desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortes. Yet I have a lock of his hair, a handful of his ashes, a box of his letters, a goatskin tambourine. And in the folds of the faded violet tissue a necklace, two violet plaques etched in Arabic, strung with black and silver threads, given to me by the boy who loved Michelangelo."