what I'm reading when I sneak away Trollope :) I really enjoyed this memoir/tribute to Robert Mapplethorpe from Patti Smith, a sweet story with lots of NYC references to the Sixties and Seventies and the people who made it happen (i.e. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Andy Warhol, Chelsea Hotel). ( )

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

“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

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.

Not as interesting as I thought it would be. A shallow and uncomplicated (if lovely) picture of the kind of perfect boho life everyone wishes they'd lived in the '60s. Didn't quite manage to finish it, but I'm counting it anyway. ( )

Wonderfully written snapshot of a time and place and the struggles and joys of 2 extraordinarily gifted artists. Spiritual journey. ( )

Way stuffier than I expected. You'd think a book by a rock star would be rockin', but this is meditative, academic, kind of dry, and full of references that went totally over my head. I didn't love it, but once I let go of my expectations, I was impressed by Smith's gravitas. You can tell that she isn't fooling around here; she takes her art seriously. I'm still skeptical that this deserved the NBA, though. Maybe the judges were all coming of age in the 60s and 70s too. ( )

Touching and sublime.

From a Goodreads list by Alice Hoffman of New York themed books. I loved this book, well written and interesting. ( )

My very sweet niece gave me this book, one that I had been anxious to read since it first came out. I really enjoyed getting that insider's view of those amazing times in NYC, but was surprised at the extremely poor quality of the writing, especially from someone who's life's work is about challenging conventional, accepted representations of the world. To reuse a word I just applied in another review, so much of this book was written in an hackneyed style that was hard to take and made the reading slow going. ( )

Here's what I wrote in 2011 about this read: "Very enjoyable. Learned a lot about Patti Smith, Robert Maplethorpe, and NYC scene of the 60's and 70's. They were just kids, and how interesting that they came together at that point in time, with so many talented and famous others." ( )

Patti's love of books and words rises with lyric clarity from the first page. Sketching her early life with her family she moves quickly to focus on her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe -- a near-stranger whom she asks to rescue her from an odd date. Patti offers an unvarnished account of their friendship and lire together as lovers. Often going hungry, it is clear that the growing trust of their relationship is their bedrock amidst the struggle to survive, and for Robert to break into the art world, during the late 1960's and early 1970's. Often dotted with the appearance of famous names like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, the narrative magic for me springs from Smith's attention to detail in her interactions with Robert as he realizes his own identity and develops as an artist.

Occasionally uneven, the writing overall strikes me as a gift, a printed shrine, to an unusual, enduring friendship.

six degrees (or less) of separation story: jay dee. daugherty -- patti smith's drummer in 1975 and later a member of her band from 1995 to the present -- dated diane crane of santa barbara in the 70's. jay dee left (gave?) a wool tweed suit to diane's brother, ken crane. i married ken crane who still owns and occasionally wears that suit.
( )

I have long enjoyed Patti Smith's music and have been receiving her weekly emails. She is always interesting and intriguing so I decided to read one of her books. I picked "Just Kids" and I can see why it was a National Book Award winner. Her story of her early in life move to New York and relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe which started long before either of them had even decided what they would do with their lives is magical. "Just Kids" is not an autobiography of Patti's life, it is the story of her life spent with Mapplethorpe. They lived in poverty but were held together by their love, friendship, and mutual support. Their special relationship lasted until his death in 1989, even though by then they were no longer together as a couple. The book is filled with many fascinating and wonderful people they met along the route of their lives. Patti's prose is wonderful to read, at times it is more of a prose poem. This book is a meaningful and moving story to immerse yourself in. Patti is a remarkable human being. I have already bought two more of her books and I am eager to read them as well. ( )

Really amazing memoir that did a great job of evoking the time and place of New York City in the early 70s, and a melancholy, loving tribute to her friend Robert. This will be seen as a classic memoir for decades. ( )

What this does better than any other I've read is remember. Yes, it's a memoir, so perhaps that goes without saying, but if it's worth anything, it's worth saying. It remembers. And memorializes, provides a spacetime for reflective life, when we ponder, enjoy, speak with the things around us in a sometimes incommunicable way. Original love, language.

The finish is itself followed by remembrances. After the end what do we have? Objects and some scribbles. I think Just Kids gathers more of these after death because we must sit with it, take the scraps in as they may be taken in by one so loving of Robert. Truly.

okay, i'm very late coming to this, though interested in both Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe, and beyond them in the whole late 60s-early 70s scene in New York City. but it's rather wonderful, and beautifully laid out and written, one of the best memoirs i've ever read, with not a word misplaced or wasted. ( )

This review is for the audio edition, narrated by the author.

Patti Smith's memoir of her life with Robert Mapplethorpe is an engaging look at the lives of two struggling young artists in the cultural hotspots of 70s and 80s Manhattan. It is surprising how much of the Manhattan scene Smith was connected with, well before she was famous. The Factory, the Chelsea Hotel, the Beat poets, the Woodstock musicians, Rolling Stone, Smith had links to them all. Her book is of interest more for her insights into these artistic movements than for the CBGBs scene that made her famous.

There are some cringing moments where she over-indulges the hero-worship of her youth (Rimbaud, Jim Morrison etc) but it's not too cloying.

That said, the audio experience of this book turned me off audiobooks forever. Smith speaks slowly and deliberately, taking 10 hours to read a book I could read myself in half that time. I also found her accent annoying after a while: too many dropped gs, feller-artistes, draw-wings and so on for me. It just got irritating. ( )

I really didn't know what I was getting into with this book. I thought I knew who Patti Smith was. I didn't.

Her book is part memoir and part autobiography and it details her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. A relationship that evolves from friends to lovers to friends to almost like family. Their bond is unusual and deep and moving.

What I loved about this book is how it illuminates the life of an artist. Honestly, it is beyond hard for me to relate to living like Smith and Mapplethorpe did in pursuit of art. I can't imagine the drive. They really struggled financially and had to use every bit of creativity they had just to survive. I would have gotten a regular 9-5 job in the first ten minutes of their story.

Another strength of the book is how well Patti portrays their relationship. I ended up falling a little bit in love with Robert myself, and the book does a great job of evoking the chemistry between them.

The only part of the book that fell short for me was the litany of name dropping. This part might be the highlight for people who grew up in the time period and who have had an interest in art, poetry, and rock and roll. For me, the parts that introduced the many famous artists and musicians of the time (Joplin, Warhol, and many other renowned people in the arts) were just not that engaging. I had to keep looking up each name to figure out what they did, and the anecdotes weren't terribly interesting to me. Unlike Patti and Robert . . .their story was gripping and told with a wonderful tenderness.

A four star book with many five star sections! ( )

Éramos unos niños. La historia de amistad que unió a Mapplethorpe y Patti Smith contada por ella misma. Nacida en Chicaco en 1946, Smith saltó a la fama durante el movimiento punk con su álbum debut Horses. La llamada «madrina del punk» aportó un punto de vista feminista e intelectual al movimiento y se convirtió en una de las artistas más influyentes dentro de la música rock, integrándola con un estilo de poesía beat. Los inicios de su carrera estuvieron marcados por su amistad con el fotógrafo Mapplethorpe con quien, según ella, se casó para disimular su homosexualidad. Estas memorias son un recorrido por las calles del Nueva York de fi nales de los años setenta y principios de los ochenta, un mundo ya perdido donde circulaban Allen Ginsberg o Andy Warhol y sus chicos, y donde se creaban las grandes bandas de música que marcaron el fin del siglo XX.

NA ( )

I don't often read rock star bios or memoirs and when I do it's usually disappointing. This is much better than average. ( )

This is a beautiful book, a lovingly told story about a best friend, soulmate, someone who is your other half. Simply told but written with deep insight, this book is as much about Patti figuring out what Robert was to her, deciphering their relationship through the analysis of memories.

As for the book, the background of the Chelsea Hotel and New York is as much a character as any human. Before this, I knew that Chelsea Hotel was the catalyst for so much music and art in the late 70's, early 80's, but I didn't realize just how important it was, it seemed every important artist had a connection there, even if it was just a few weeks.

As for the author - she writes with a very grateful, humble voice. Its clear she is an introvert who needs someone to tell her that what she is doing is good. I'd be interested in what her friends think about her because from what she says in this book, most of her success comes from her friends who saw something and encouraged it.

This was a joy to read. The ending is bitter sweet and this book was written to fill a void left by Robert's passing, managing to both be respectful, but not shy away from the bad. I highly recommend reading this. ( )

Superficial autobiographic story of Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe. Most interesting to me was their life for art -- often hunger, doing marginal crimes to eat. They seemed to care for each other until the end. See drops many names which provides a sense of living on the avant-garde edge in the late sixties and early seventies but to an outsider there's nothing that explains their movement. ( )

As another reviewer has put it, this book is a “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman” set in New York in the late sixties and early seventies. I recognised few of the names mentioned as coming into Smith’s life, but this didn’t lessen my enjoyment and appreciation of the book, so don’t be put off by unfamiliarity with the perceived subject matter; the subject is artistic growth which is fascinatingly, and beautifully, projected.
Smith has a way with words - just, enjoy. ( )

Horses by Patti Smith is one of my favourite albums and her version of Gloria, from it, may well be my all-time favourite song, charged with energy, iconoclasm and a woman lusting after another woman (in the mid-70s!) while creating a rock and roll persona not far from Jim Morrison’s.

And this book was often recommended. I approached it with a certain trepidatious reverence. I was not disappointed.

It is essentially about creating art, and the commitment to art that it takes, to make yourself known.

Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe are the “kids” here. They supported each other’s artistic development, they were lovers for a while, they were friends for life.

Described as a “prelude to fame,” Patti narrates her own work in the audiobook version, which is interesting, even intriguing, and occasionally annoying.

Her Jersey accent appears when she drops her “g” in most words ending in “ing”. Thankfully, it does not go so far as “Joisey.”

Peculiarly, when she speaks of her drawings, it sounds like “drawlings,” so much so that I thought she meant what I heard her to say and looked it up as a compound of drawing and scrawling. Cannot find it.

I love her story about her first meeting Alan Ginsberg, which I found strangely moving.

Writing of two talented drag queens, she said of them that “they were ahead of their time. They did not live to see the time they were ahead of.” And later, she closes that loop.

She participates in a few plays, but does not see herself as an actor.

Her first public poetry performance is as a support act to another poet, and what to me is her famous opening line to her wonderful version of Gloria, is uttered and unremarked upon. She knows what she did there.

Her story continues to forming a band and recording THAT album, Horses. And then, telescoping beyond, mainly tracing her relationship with Mapplethorpe.

SPOILER ALERT

It ends sadly. ( )

very impressing
i read it in a local bookstore summer 2019(?) ( )

Un libro muy interesante aunque no seas fan de Patti Smith ( )