Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner - Hardcover

Smith, Patti

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006621131X ISBN 13: 9780066211312

Publisher: Ecco Press, 2010

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"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

"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

"The most compelling memoir by a rock artist since Bob Dylan's 'Chronicles: Volume One, ' written with intimacy and grace...."--Chicago Tribune

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

Book Description:

Winner of the 2010 Non-Fiction National Book Award Patti Smith's evocative, honest and moving coming-of-age story of her extraordinary relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 006621131X
• ISBN 13: 9780066211312
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304