Just Kids ( Certified Reading)

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.

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.

Tolles Buch, hab es mit Freude gelesen

Patti Smith forjó una reputación formidable gracias a su actuación en el escenario + frente a la cámara cada vez que daba entrevistas. Pero detrás del grito rebelde yacía una persona de increíble calidez, buen humor + generosidad de espíritu. A medida que crece en la "contracultura" escuchamos todo sobre sus aventuras, encuentros + influencias formativas. A los fanáticos del rock les encantará sus recuerdos de charlar con Jimi Hendrix pocos días antes de su muerte o la noche que pasó consolando a Janis Joplin cuando otro hombre la decepcionó. Si adoras a los escritores beatnick entonces te intriga aprender que uno de ellos una vez la confundió con un niño "bonito" + trató de recogerla! Pero si Just Kids tiene algo que enseñarnos es seguramente que el Amor viene en muchas formas diferentes. Y en ese momento el Amor de su joven Vida era Robert Mapplethorpe. Sólo más tarde descubrió que era homosexual+ muy dispuesto a vender su cuerpo a hombres por sexo. Pero luego desarrolló un interés en Bondage + sadomasoquismo que él sostuvo que era totalmente artístico, pero la pobre Patti tenía sus dudas. Sin embargo, el vínculo (! ) entre ellos permaneció tan fuerte como siempre. Su Amor había sufrido un extraño cambio alquímico: ahora eran como hermano + hermana. Incluso cuando Robert estaba muriendo de SIDA un mayor, más maduro + ahora casado Patti seguía a su lado. Ella había tenido su primer hijo con Fred Sonic Smith y su segundo estaba en camino... viviendo dentro de ella mientras Robert yacía muriendo... Como Patti tan bellamente lo dice: «Estábamos como Hansel + Gretel + nos aventuramos a la selva negra del mundo. Hubo tentaciones +brujas + demonios con los que nunca soñamos + había esplendor que sólo imaginamos parcialmente. Nadie podía hablar por estos 2 jóvenes ni contar verdades de sus días y noches juntos. Sólo Robert + podía decirlo. Y, habiendo ido, me dejó la tarea a mí...

so so so so good