The Book I Read: Just Kids by Patti Smith

My experience of reading Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids was putting "Patti Smith" (rocker, poet, icon, etc.) through a prism and watching refracted light emerge from the other end. When I wrote about this documentary some time ago I lamented how it made me like Smith less; she came off as precious and flighty, always performing and unwilling to offer a single genuine moment before the camera.

What a relief that Just Kids turns out to be so emotionally direct and moving. The better part of the book is an account of Smith's relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whom Smith met shortly after her late '60s arrival in New York. Smith was half a rung above homeless when she met Mapplethorpe; over the years he would serve as her lover, friend, mentor, inspiration, and usually some combination at any given time. The love affair would give way in time to Mapplethorpe's homosexuality; his conflicts about his sexual identity would filter into the provocative photographs that drew the ire of anti-NEA crusaders years later. Mapplethorpe's love for Smith never wavered though. He was an early champion of her half-formed ambitions to write and to change the world through art and was an eager audience member at her first poetry readings.

Just Kids is a marvelous firsthand account of funky downtown New York from the late '60s into the '70s. Smith and Mapplethorpe don't truly find a stable living situation until they reach the iconic Chelsea Hotel, where in Smith's account it was routine to cross paths with Janis Joplin, William Burroughs, and plenty of others on an almost daily basis. Maybe it's the wisdom of 40 years, but Smith never sounds starstruck. Smith was the source of steady income in those early years, clerking at book stores and reselling used books while Mapplethorpe worked his way up in the art world. As Smith gradually discovers her poetic voice and desire for a kind of rock stardom she pulls away from Mapplethorpe but still needs him as a supportive voice. If she pulls any punches it's in her description of what Mapplethorpe's becoming gay must have done to her self-esteem, but Just Kids is a book written out of deep love. The description of Mapplethorpe's final days (he died of AIDS in 1989) is haunting and the last photo he took of her is unreservedly affectionate. The times (and the kind of love) Smith describes seem very far away; Just Kids is the story of two artists finding their place in a world that didn't know it needed them.