Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner

Patti Smith

Apr 2010 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

Just Kids (2010) Patti Smith won the 2010 Nonfiction National Book Award for Just Kids, the story of her remarkable relationship with the controversial photographer/artist Robert Mapplethorpe. 1970s New York in the days of disco, Warhol art, free love, recreational drugs, and the Beat poets comes alive in her telling of how she and Mapplethorpe developed their art together in the Chelsea Hotel. He was a painter, jeweler, and ultimately a photographer. She was a painter, writer, and musician. Together they grew from street people to fame. It's an amazing story! WPL Call No: 784.5 SM and Book Club Reviewer: Kathleen Farrell (January 2011) You might also like: Life by Keith Richards

When I first put eyes on this book I just thought about Patti's music and the black-and-white photo booth pictures that I myself used to love and enjoy taking with my friends in the late seventies - and early eighties. But when I started to read this book I found that I just couldn't put it down, and that my day was spent thinking and feeling every page I had read. This book is truly a masterpiece, not just because Patti is a great writer, but also because Patti Smith really puts into words how deep a friendship can be. Her friendship to Robert was deeper than the deepest cave. This book guided me by the hand through the streets of New York, had me tasting the life and goings-on in the Chelsea Hotel. I was astonished by her knowledge of French literature and French Poets. This story - memoir - took me deep into myself to feel the curosity of youth, the danger of drugs and sex, and the sad sadness of loss. I cried my eyes out.....This book touched me deeply, and I will never forget it.

im sure this book is fabulous, and i want to read it sooo badly, but it's way beyond my budget. im a shut in and love to read, but i can't afford many of the books im interested in. the cheapie true crime ones are gruesome and depressing. not everyone wants to read that stuff.

About the author

Patti Smith is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary mergence of poetry and rock and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Her seminal album Horses, bearing Robert Mapplethorpe’s renowned photograph, hasbeen hailed as one of the top one hundred albums of all time. Her books include M Train, Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Auguries of Innocence.