A Google user
Just Kids, by Patti Smith, is a book filled with discussion on social culture, association, the creation of art through companionship, and of course, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The book combines the visual with the poetic and the poetic with the prose, which in turn seeks a vision of the past, leaving the reader questioning whether it was a success story, confession, or simply a memoir. The narrative of the book moves through time with a dream like mysticism, mimicking the fluctuations experienced in a hyper-social drugged up culture.
At moments in the narrative, large periods of time flow through in a matter of paragraphs or sentences. In other portions, time slows to a grinding halt and the story bounds down various rabbit holes, playing with the pleasure of memory conveyed by the author, only to pick up a linear narrative again. It sometimes leaves the reader with a sense of loss. Not that of confusion, but of wonder at what exactly happened in the moment after the tangents description. That is to say, at moments, Patti Smith will increase in detail of an event or the happenings prior to an event. Then, she will leave it unfinished, making the reader desire closure to the story, but instead is left with the once again renewed linear narrative. Many of these moments occur during the happenings of Max's and the Velvet Underground which is the social bar adjoined with the Chelsea hotel. As Robert seeks to become closer to the infamous round table populated by the Warhol community, Patti Smith discusses in detail the preparation Robert obsesses over. the narrative discusses the clothing, the smoking routines, the scene of entering the bar, and maybe a couple chance meetings, as well as who attended the bar and their significance. Then suddenly, there is a break in the page, and the narrative turns to another memory.
One will notice while reading the narrative, that there is a general obsession with association. Almost every page (or every other) has some sort of list, containing famous people within Patti's social culture. Bob Dylan, Rob Nueworth, Jim Carroll, Andy Warhol, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richardson, and Jim Morrison, were all people who had some significant influence on who Patti Smith saw as her society. The book focuses on a period in history when people began to take intellectual interests that were dispersed during the restoration period as well as the modernistic ideas from the 1890s to the 1930s, such as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud. This intellectual thought was then meshed together with the troubling times of politics, work, and the Vietnam war. The movement, started as more intellectual, but then slowly morphed into a rejection of just about everything held to be the norm, including ideas of religion, law and politics. Some may see it as a digression of society and others see it as the success of what it means to be an individual. Nevertheless, this movement became a form of social popular culture that eventually moved from the fruits of it's intellectual predecessors and became simply an obsession of association and an expression of individual thought. The idea may seem foreign to this generation, yet, that is only because when reading Just Kids, a younger reader won't necessarily recognize all the names being mentioned. Even now, brand and name association is prevalent within the more consumer driven society that we have today. This isn't to say that all individuals during this time had a mutual desire to express themselves through association. Patti Smith's life is shown through a filter, produced by the wandering free spirited artist. Her goals and life were influenced by her desire to be artistic and to associate with anything or anyone who expresses art. This drive propels her through a life that has various stops, where she learns new aspects of who she is, which is then combined to form her identity, while she attempts to associate and mimic other people she has interest in. For instance, she desires to live in areas close to other famous people
A Google user
One of my all time favorite albums is Patti Smith's "Horses." It contains a version of Van Morrison's "Gloria" that I saw her perform in 1976 at the Boarding House in San Francisco. It never sounded so good nor so profane. She transformed it from a rock paean of testosterone driven angst to a sacrilegious punk-bop screed ending with the defiant shattering, life defining finale chorus: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." Her sound ushered in the punk movement, justly crowning her the Queen of Punk.
So, when I was given "Just Kids" to read while recuperating from cancer I expected to read a memoir voiced by that same spit-fire who lit my fuse so many years ago. Oh my, was I in for a surprise. Gone was the jagged, rasping amped-up four beat pulsing verbals, replaced by a measured, almost nostalgic muse who recounts in the most gentle tones the evolution of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe & their joint ascent to the ranks of poet/rock icons. I was as blown away by her memoir as I was by the first time I saw her slithering across the tables in the Boarding House. She has metamorphosized from snake/chanteuse to reflective poet - once again shaping & mirroring the life cycle of her generation.
