Just Kids ( Certified Reading)

Just Kids is a luminous coming-of-age memoir that reads less as a record of events and more as an invocation of a vanished world where art, hunger and love were deeply intertwined. At its center is the relationship between Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe - a bond that defies simple labels of romance or friendship, taking on an almost mythic emotional force. What elevates the memoir beyond a conventional artist’s life story is its vivid evocation of an era when art was not merely a pursuit but a necessity. New York emerges as a restless, unpredictable presence-simultaneously generous and indifferent—where chance encounters in hotel rooms, galleries and cramped apartments quietly alter the course of lives. The city’s cultural energy, from the fading echoes of Beat literature to the rise of punk, forms the backdrop against which Smith and Mapplethorpe gradually discover themselves as artists. Their early years are marked by poverty, yet deprivation is portrayed not as misery but as a force that deepens their commitment to both art and each other. Shared rooms, borrowed meals and constant uncertainty are rendered with remarkable clarity, while the artists, musicians and poets who drift through their lives reinforce the sense of a city in perpetual transformation. The memoir’s power also lies in its emotional restraint. Even in moments of separation and loss, Smith’s prose remains composed, allowing feeling to emerge through precise observation rather than sentimentality. The evolution of Patti and Robert from inseparable companions to distinct artistic figures unfolds with quiet inevitability. Ultimately, Just Kids is not only a portrait of two artists but a meditation on creativity, devotion and the sacrifices demanded by both. It leaves behind a lingering feeling, like a half-remembered song whose melody remains long after the final note has faded.

Only if I could live with all the creative people…. nonetheless the whole journey has been beautifully told

Damnn so readable

10/10 book

Just Kids”, what an incredibly written memoir, so touching and meticulously articulated that Patti take us to the life of an young helpless teen girl, vulnerable to the vagaries of life and her serendipitous acquaintance with an young man at a very testing time of her life and later befriending him for a lifetime. Their living together and how she got groomed and evolved to became a fantastic artist with all the events unfolding candidly before our eyes and the readers themselves integrated into the life of Patti and flow along her like a fallen leaf floating with the turbulent currents. Her sorrow, ecstasy, vulnerability, uncertainty all are palpable as if she is living in our time, between us. Her extraordinarily beautiful and soulful relationship with Robert was at times heart wrenching and many a time exhilarating too but quite unforgettable and delightfully poetic. It also gives an insightful account of all those great souls, stalwarts in their own field of arts and at the same time so humane and unselfish to hold Patty in her testing times and rose her to the field of arts is nothing but the greatness of those generation of men and women. Just Kids is a delightful read.

nice

It is not often that I read a book which compels me to sit with my thoughts for hours before compiling them into a review. ‘Just Kids’ was one of them. It’s hard to summarize and pin-point it to a genre, much like Patti Smith’s career herself. It’s a promise fulfilled to a friend who served as an axis of comfort and stability in an uncertain time. It’s an homage to New York in the 60s and 70s. It’s a reflection on the life of an artist before fame. What makes this book stand out is Patti’s prose. She is a gifted writer and someone who is unassuming. For a memoir, she was able to strike the right chord – introspective, candid, sharing her shortcomings without justifying too much, and being honest enough to show the life of a struggling artist without glamorizing it.

Un libro stupendo, una scrittura super piacevole. Lo leggerei mille volte.

Das Buch ist eine Zeitreise in das New York der 70er Jahre und lässt einen so schnell nicht mehr los. Patti Smith schreibt, mit einer Wortgewandtheit die ihres gleichen sucht. Sie erzählt langsam und dennoch hat mich die Geschichte sofort in ihren Bann gezogen. Das Buch ist einfach wunderschön und trifft mitten ins Herz. Gespickt mit unzähligen Anspielungen und geschmückt durch bildhafte Formulierungen macht es einfach nur Spaß. Es lädt wirklich zum Träumen ein.

Really beautiful and touching book, which greatly exceeded my expectations. This isn't a book about Patti Smith, or her music, nor even about Robert Mapplethorpe, though obviously there's plenty about them and their work between these covers. It's a book about their relationship as artists and lovers as an entity in its own right, and as such it's one of the finest love stories you will ever read - a mostly platonic story for sure, but no less powerful for all that. You put the book down feeling that he was surely her 'other half', and she his - that they made one another whole, as people as well as artists. The writing is never sentimental, even when it's dealing with Robert's untimely end - it's crisp and hard-edged, but never prosaic, and the more powerful for it. Her recollections of tough times in New York around the turn of the 70s and growing up in places like the Chelsea Hotel and CBGBs before they became tourist destinations are captured with an artist's clear eye and are a valuable addition in themselves to other memoirs of those times. But it's the story of Robert and Patti that rightly dominates. A very moving, life-affirming memoir, and highly recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in their work and those times.

so so so so good

4.5 Stars ”It was the summer Coltrane died. The summer of “Crystal Ship.” Flower children raised their empty arms and China exploded the H-bomb. Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey. AM radio played “Ode to Billie Joe.” There were riots in Newark, Milwaukee, and Detroit. It was the summer of Elvira Madigan, the summer of love. And in this shifting, inhospitable atmosphere, a chance encounter change the course of my life.” It was that summer when Patti Smith met Robert Mapplethorpe. Just Kids is a love story of these two young people who, against all odds, meet, fall in love, and cling to that love long after they’ve chosen other partners, other ways of life, and love. It’s a love story of the city where they fell in love, and perhaps even a bit of a love story to the art and poetry and music that was created in the course of their love story. They combined their meager possessions, but money was problematic, they barely made enough money for food – and frequently went without. Extras were out of reach. Books they had already owned were their prized possessions, as was their music limited to those albums they’d brought into this relationship. And still, they were able to enjoy some concerts just by virtue of being in the right place at the right time, or knowing the right person. ”Yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods.” There are a very few years that they were not in touch, Smith’s focused on her music career, her marriage to Fred “Sonic” Smith, and Mapplethorpe focused on his art, his partner. Time passes, children come along, and when Smith is expecting a second child, they re-establish communication. ”We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was splendor we only partially imagined. No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together. Only Robert and I could tell it. Our story, as he called it. And having gone, he left the task for me to tell it to you.” I knew very little about Patti Smith, I knew who she was, is, and that I’ve heard some of her songs, knew she was a musician… beyond that, nothing. So, when this book first came out, and my brother sent me a signed copy of this, along with a few other books, and I vaguely recall seeing it and wondering why he sent it to me. And then, years later, also sent me a signed copy of M Train. I was beginning to feel a little guilty. I loved this. There’s a bit of that raw energy and the grittiness of living in their early days together, the descriptions of the city, especially at night. The Romeo and Julietness of it all. Beautiful prose. Their story reminded me of one of my favourite poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ”Sonnet XXX – Love Is Not All” ”Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.”