Just Kids
2006
- women poets
- chelsea hotel
- women rock musicians
- photographers
- musicians
- artists
- american poets
- nyt:paperback_nonfiction=2010-12-11
- biography
- rock musicians
The story
In this memoir, singer-songwriter Patti Smith shares tales of New York City : the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's and Strand bookstores and her new life in Brooklyn with a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe--the man who changed her life with his love, friendship, and genius.
What it’s like
Unhurried and tender, written in Patti Smith's plain, lyrical prose, with long reflective passages that drift from cramped Brooklyn rooms to the dim velvet bar of Max's Kansas City and the faded corridors of the Hotel Chelsea. The texture is of cheap coffee, thrift-store coats, pawned typewriters, and gray winter streets, with bursts of crowded downtown nightlife and the hush of bookstore aisles. Pacing is loose and episodic, more like a long walk through memory than a plot, and the tone is earnest, bruised, and quietly hopeful, with a steady undercurrent of longing and devotion. The emotional arc follows two young artists finding each other and their vocations while the city is still rough and cheap. Intensity is low: there is no graphic violence, and the sexual content is brief and non-explicit, with some references to drug use and the fragility of 1970s bohemian life. Good for readers who want a reflective, atmospheric memoir of art and friendship, a comfort read for a rainy afternoon or late night, and anyone drawn to portraits of creative life in New York.
More books like Just Kids
Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Just Kidsand we’ll explain which ones fit you.
