Just Kids

All through college, I had a Maplethorpe self-portrait on my wall. This book is as much about youth and memory as it is about the love and friendship and collaboration between these two artists. Made me think a lot about growing up and who we lose and who we become along the way.

Patti Smith foi fundamental na minha formação musical e poética, tendo nascido um mês antes de minha mãe, Patti é uma espécie de mãe intelectual que moldou minhas afinidades e voltar a ler esse livro é sempre um lembrete que mulher extraordinária ela foi e ainda de fato é, numa prosa acachapante de deliciosa ela demonstra todo o afeto que nutriu por esse amigo/amante e que não se perdeu pelo caminho, sem um pingo de ressentimento ou picuinha, ela delineia a construção de um amor verdadeiro que perpassou pouco mais de duas décadas e o qual nós comumente chamamos de amizade, mas que aqui se mostra tão elevado que não podemos achar palavra que contemple tal plenitude de relacionamento.
Livro fundamental para entender a show more história - dos anos 60/70, da arte, da música, da poesia, da literatura, da moda, de Nova York - um tratado pleno dos sentimentos e acontecimentos de uma geração. show less

When people have romantic notions of NYC, quite often they're thinking of the city in the 1960's and 1970's. This is the world brought to life in Patti Smith's memoir JUST KIDS. She takes the reader through Brooklyn and the East Village, into the apartments, clubs, cafes, and bookshops of the day. We have lunch with Alan Ginsberg, attend movie showings at Andy Warhol's factory, chat with Jimi Hendrix, and stock shelves at The Strand bookshop. After reading this book, I felt as though I could close my eyes and see this world and experience its sounds and smells.

But this is not a memoir about New York; it's focus is on the relationship between the author and the artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Finding each other haphazardly, they shared show more apartments, studio space, and their souls with each other. The reader follows along on their paths of discovering their artistic callings and themselves as humans in the modern world. There are creative highs and lows - many examples of the "starving artist" are found in these pages - but together they weathered them all. Their deep friendship outlasted their romantic relationship and they kept in contact up until Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS in the late 1980's.

While the memoir is incredibly heartfelt and moving, the way that Patti Smith chose to transcribe it is what makes it truly memorable. Each sentence has a power and emotion behind it, so that the writing is not only powerful but powerfully poetic. You share in the tragedies and triumphs, and really feel their world. show less

The audio book of this National Book Award winner, as read by Patti herself. is entertaining, joyous, and sorrowful. That New Jersey accent! I am the same age and grew up in a suburb of NYC, but I never ended up sleeping on stoops or in Central Park, which Patti does when she leaves her South Jersey working class family and throws herself into creating art in NYC. On her first night in the city, she meets Robert Mapplethorpe in a crash pad, and they immediately become determined to find success in art and poetry. They're mostly starving and scrounging until they scare up enough funds to rent the smallest room at the notorious Chelsea Hotel, and by hanging out in the lobby and at the El Quijote restaurant next door, they meet musicians, show more elder beat poets, artists, junkies, and denizens of Andy Warhol's Factory. They stay romantically attached until Robert gives in to his attraction to men, but they remain the most loyal and loving friends. Robert insists that only fame will validate his talent. Patti is shy and only a new Keith Richards haircut brings her out and gains the attention of major and minor celebrities, which is as negligible to her as it is important to Robert. Her narrative, with that unique accent, is simultaneously thrilling and heartbreaking. Despite the tragic ending of Patti's mysterious move to Detroit and Robert's death, listening is a true pleasure and I wanted it to never end. show less

Some autobiographies are self-congratulatory, others seek to make excuses; seldom does a writer so deeply share the stage of a memoir of youth woven with a companion soul, relating a combined tale of a "we." Smith not only does just that, but does so candidly, unflinchingly, and with relentless warmth. In her song "Gloria," Smith sings of "my sins my own, they belong to me" and she owns them in these pages, asking not for absolution but audience. Though fortunate enough to be swept along in a time and place that fostered her art, she shows us how the threads of Robert Mapplethorpe's weavings are inextricable from her own. There is memory in here, but the emotions are as fresh as yesterday and expressed as prayers, verse, and ramble that show more bring the sounds and smells of the settings themselves. What a rewarding memoir. show less

First, the last third of the book was incredible – it was everything I wanted all of the book to be. It was here that Patti Smith finally seemed to connect emotionally with things; it was honest, emotional, and gripping and made me cry and wish it would go on forever.

The rest of it….not so much. The earlier parts were more a series of lists of things she did and people she met. It was not quite her story, not quite Robert’s, and somehow managed to be both too detailed (she ate a lot of anchovy sandwiches) and too superficial (since she never stayed with any one story long enough to go deep).

Mind you, this may be just me. I have always loved Patti Smith’s poetry and I still play Horses regularly. I grew up in New York City, and show more I overlapped with her last two years (I even saw her play at CBGBs) so that was the part of the story I was most interested in to begin with and that was the part that most resonated with me…. down to the industrial lofts for artists in residence, the garbage can fires on the Bowery streets, and the empowered gay culture in the days before AIDS. Point being, I came to the book wanting certain things from it rather than being fully prepared to just let it unfold.... show less

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.