Just Kids Patti
Just Kids by Patti Smith is a story of two friends and how they helped one another achieve their dreams of success. Patti Smith is a musician, poet, and artist who comes of age in the 1960's. She befriends Robert Mapplethorpe who becomes her friend, partner, muse, protector, and supporter. Just Kids is a memoir by Patti Smith, detailing her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe and her experiences in the New York art scene from the late sixties to the early seventies. Rating 173,387 Ratings In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal da.
Just Kids by Patti Smith is a story of two friends and how they helped one another achieve their dreams of success. Patti Smith is a musician, poet, and artist who comes of age in the 1960's. She befriends Robert Mapplethorpe who becomes her friend, partner, muse, protector, and supporter. Patti and Robert becomes part of the art and music scene in New York at the height of the sixties. They have connections with Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, and Andy Warhol as well as many poets and writers of the day.
Just Kids tells of Patti and Robert's evolving relationship as they mature and find success in both the art and music worlds. Patti leaves her home in southern New Jersey to find success in New York City. What she finds is a hard existence where she lives on the street for a time even when she finds a job she can barely afford to buy food. She questions her reasons for being in the city until she meets Robert Mapplethorpe. He becomes her protector and takes her into his life. They challenge each other to grow creatively.
As they grow and mature, their relationship changes. In the beginning, Patti and Robert are lovers who want nothing more than one another. Patti soon learns that Robert is a homosexual who is ashamed of his feelings toward other men. He was raised Catholic and feels that what he feels is a sin. He tries to suppress these feelings for Patti, but they are part of who he is. In their innocence, they attempt to stay together and promise that they will always be there for one another.
Robert has always known that he is an artist and he lives and breathes art. Patti is in a constant search for who she is meant to be. The people she meets through her relationship with Robert and the creative world of New York in the 1960's try to guide her toward where they feel she should be. She attempts art, acting, writing and music. She is an exuberant personality and this inhibits her acting ability. Robert encourages her art and poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso encourage her writing. Patti begins to find success as a poet and musician and forms relationships with other men as Robert also embraces his homosexuality and starts forming relationships with men. Patti and Robert are living separate lives, but are always there for one another. Patti finds success first as Robert begins to delve into photography as a way to express his artistry. Patti forms a band and mixes poetry and rock and roll for an eclectic mix that finds a large following.
As the pair matures and finds lasting relationships, their own relationship suffers. Patti marries and has children. She moves away from New York to Detroit. Robert and his partner develop AIDS and Patti is drawn back to New York to offer her support to her lifelong friend. Just Kids tells of the bond between two people forged during an innocent time that changed both of their lives. When they met, they were young naïve children. Over time, they grew up into successful adults who together helped shape an entire artistic era.
Description
The legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.
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 42nd 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. A true fable, Just Kids is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.Product Details
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Reviews
'An utterly charming, captivating, intimate portrait of a late 1960s and early 1970s period of intense artistic ferment in downtown Manhattan significantly shaped and keenly observed by rock firebrand Smith.'--Philadelphia Inquirer
'Just Kids shows how Smith integrated the romance of her twenty-year friendship with Mapplethorpe with her historical preoccupations, elevating them to an almost sacred status. The past, for Smith, has always driven her life forward. If only we could all be so free-spirited.'--The Rumpus
'A revelation. In a spellbinding memoir as notable for its restraint as for its lucidity, its wit as well as its grace, Smith tells the story of how she and Robert Mapplethorpe found each other... beautifully crafted, vivid, and indelible.'--Booklist
'JUST KIDS describes [Smith and Mapplethorpe's] ascent with a forthright sweetness that will ring true to anyone who knows her work.'--Bloomberg.com
'The most compelling memoir by a rock artist since Bob Dylan's 'Chronicles: Volume One, ' written with intimacy and grace....'--Chicago Tribune
'A remarkable book --sweet and charming and many other words you wouldn't expect to apply to a punk-rock icon.'--Newsday
'Patti Smith's memoir of her youth with Robert Mapplethorpe testifies to a rare and ferocious innocence...'Just Kids' is a book utterly lacking in irony or sophisticated cynicism.'--Salon.com
'The most enchantingly evocative memoir of funky-but-chic New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s that any alumnus has yet committed to print.'--Janet Maslin's top 10 books of 2010, New York Times
'More than 30 years after its release, Horses still has the power to shock and inspire young musicians to express themselves with unbridled passion. Now she brings the same raw, lyrical quality to her first book of prose.'--Clive Davis, Vanity Fair
'A spellbinding portrait of bohemian New York in the late 1960s and early '70s.'--New York Times Book Review, Paperback Row
'A moving portrait of the artist as a young woman, and a vibrant profile of Smith's onetime boyfriend and lifelong muse, Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989...JUST KIDS is ultimately a wonderful portal into the dawn of Smith's art.'--Los Angeles Times
'Patti Smith's telling of the years she spent with Robert Mapplethorpe is full of optimism sprinkled with humor...JUST KIDS...is sorely lacking in irony or cynicism; Smith's worldview is infectious. She's a jumble of influences, but that's part of her charm.'--Austin American-Statesman
'Terrifically evocative and splendidly titled...the most spellbinding and diverting portrait of funky-but-chic New York in the late '60s and early '70s that any alumnus has committed to print....This enchanting book is a reminder that not all youthful vainglory is silly; sometimes it's preparation.'--New York Times Book Review
'One of the best things I've ever read in my life.'--Don Imus
'Smith's beautifully crafted love letter to her friend Robert Mapplethorpe functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by passion for art and writing. Her elegant eulogy lays bare the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpe's life and work.'--Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Books of the Year
'A shockingly beautiful book...a classic, a romance about becoming an artist in the city, written in a spare, simple style of boyhood memoirs like Frank Conroy's 'Stop Time.'--New York Magazine
'A heartbreakingly sweet recollection of just that sort of vanished Bohemian life...Just as [Smith] stands out as an artiste in a movement based on collectivism, her singular voice gleams among rock memoirs as a work of literature.'--Boston Globe
'Deeply affecting...a vivid portrayal of a bygone New York that could support a countercultural artistic firmament...the power of this book comes from [Smith's] ability to recall lucid memories in straightforward prose.'--BookForum
'Remarkable, evocative... JUST KIDS is more than just a gift to [Smith's] ex-lover; it's a gift to everyone who has ever been touched by their art, and to everyone who's ever been in love. Like the best of Smith's music and Mapplethorpe's art, this book is haunting and unforgettable.'--NPR Boston
'Smith's writing about her early days with Mapplethorpe is fervid and incantatory but never falls into incoherence.'--The Oregonian (Portland)
'In the end, [JUST KIDS is] not just an ode to Mapplethorpe, but a love letter to New York City's '70s art scene itself.'--Time Out New York
'Captivating....a poignant requiem...and a radiant celebration of life. Grade: A.'--Entertainment Weekly
'One of the best books ever written on becoming an artist...Jesus may have died for somebody's sins, but Patti Smith lives and writes and sings for all of us.'--Washington Post
'[JUST KIDS] is funny and sad but always exhilarating.'--Tampa Tribune
'To read JUST KIDS is to be struck by how powerfully the two, especially Smith, believed in the power of art....Despite her music's angry clamor, despite his sometimes revolting images, Smith and Mapplethorpe retain, in her telling, a primal, childlike innocence.'--Dallas Morning News
'Astonishing on many levels, most notably for Smith's lapidary prose....[JUST KIDS] is simply one of the best memoirs to be published in recent years: inspiring, sad, wise and beautifully written.'--San Francisco Chronicle
'Composed of incandescent sentences more revelatory than anything from Patti Smith's poems or songs, her romantic memoir also reveals what blunt narrative instruments the earlier career bios of her and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe have been.'--Village Voice, Best Books of 2010 Round-Up
'Sometimes there is justice in the world. That was my first thought when I heard that Patti Smith had won the National Book Award this fall for her glorious memoir, Just Kids.'--Maureen Corrigan's favorite books of 2010, NPR's Fresh Air
'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, Top 10 Books of 2010
'Poetically written and vividly remembered. [Smith] reminded me of the idealism of art.'--Matthew Weiner, creator of MAD MEN, in New York magazine
' A story of art, identity, devotion, discovery, and love, the book is [Smith's] first prose work...[it] conjures up the passionate collaboration--as lovers, friends, soul mates, and creators--that she and Mapplethorpe embarked on from the summer they met in Brooklyn in 1967.'--Elle
'[JUST KIDS] offers a revealing account of the fears and insecurities harbored by even the most incendiary artists, as well as their capacity for reverence and tenderness.'--USA Today
'[Just Kids] reminds us that innocence, utopian ideals, beauty and revolt are enlightenment's guiding stars in the human journey. Her book recalls, without blinking or faltering, a collective memory -- one that guides us through the present and into the future.'--Michael Stipe, Time magazine
'Smith lovingly depicts the denizens of the Chelsea Hotel - is that Janis Joplin at the bar? - and the rock club CBGB, all the while pondering how to be an uncompromising artist who nonetheless needs to pay the rent.'--Boston Globe
'[A] beautifully crafted love letter to [Robert Mapplethorpe]...Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York...[a] tender and tough memoir...[an] elegant eulogy.'--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
'Riveting and exquisitely crafted.'--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
'A touching tale of love and devotion.'--Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers
Just Kids Patti Smith
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