PS-JK
Patti Smith, Just Kids – The book Just Kids is about Patti Smith and her lover/friend/accomplice Robert Mapplethorpe, the famous gay photographer of controversial homoerotic images who died of AIDS in 1989. The book is relatively short, but contains many very nice photos and drawings of our young protagonists. The book recounts Smith’s youth in rural New Jersey and her early years in New York, first as a destitute street kid, slowly working her way up in life, working in book stores, living in poverty, moving around Manhattan and Brooklyn until finally taking up a residency in the Chelsea Hotel and eventually becoming serious about her art. The musical voyage isn’t explained very clearly, almost taken for granted – one minute she’s plain old Patti Smith, the next she’s got her own band (and what a band!).
Meanwhile, Robert is going through his own travails, experimenting with his art, his sexuality, and drugs, experiencing several bouts of desperate sickness, eventually hustling his way through life, both literally and figuratively, all the while reinventing himself as an icon of the art world.
The small things are the most valuable, like when Smith talks about books she bought, or sitting in a room, or making a cup of tea, or meeting famous people. She also reveals herself to be someone who remembers birthdays of family members, friends and influencers. But mostly I was happy to read a book where music is cited so often, especially that of the Rolling Stones – she describes listening to Beggar’s Banquet endlessly, or attending the premiere of Ladies And Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones, a film I just bought on DVD.
The start and the end of the book both deal with Mapplethorpe’s death. The chronology of the book goes roughly up until 1975, dips a bit into 1978 and 1979, leaves out most of the 1980s entirely, as well as anything after Mapplethorpe’s death. It is truly only the life of Patti Smith in the context of Robert Mapplethorpe, RIP.