“with or without the rest of the world”
In January, Sam posted some words about Patti Smith and her memoir, Just Kids. I finished the book last night and will say that it belongs among the top five or ten most important books of my life to date.
The book is concerned most of all with Smith’singular relationship with fellow artist Robert Mapplethorpe, detailing their meeting when both were twenty years old and homeless in 1967 New York and continuing through their tenuous and endlessly resourceful togetherness in all the places you’d expect: Tompkin’s Square Park, Coney Island, the Chelsea, Max’s Kansas City, the Factory, etc. But there’s no sense of the ego or jaded perspective that could easily come along with the telling of such an iconic tale. After she describes sitting in Janis Joplin’s suite in the Chelsea while Janis jammed with Kris Kristofferson, Smith says: “I was there for these moments, but so young and preoccupied with my own thoughts that I hardly recognized them as moments.”
Inevitably I think some readers may accuse Smith of romanticizing: even through what were clearly hard, painful, and stressful periods of time, she acknowledges the negative without ever letting it rise to the surface of the narrative. All hardship is seemingly rendered obsolete by the intense bond between her and Mapplethorpe, even as their romantic relationship wanes upon his discovering his homosexuality. And in a competitive art world, there is no focus given to personal rivalries, disputes, cattiness or petty drama of any kind– indeed, as a self-described outsider, Smith reveals herself as a shy young woman who rarely feels comfortable joining these established inner circles.
The poverty that pervades the protagonists’ lives for the majority of the book (blood-stained walls and an oven stuffed with syringes) even seems sweet as it comes to define the shared nature of their relationship: when they had money enough to even go to a museum, they could only afford one ticket, so one would go in and then describe the exhibit to the other.
On the page, Smith’s loyalty to and love for Mapplethorpe never devolve into angst. Through much of the book, she supports both of them through various full-time jobs while he stays home and draws, he uses the one desk while she tapes her drawing paper to the walls, she befriends his new partners even as she sleeps alone in the next room, and on. And yet her acceptance and willing embrace of these conditions never feels disingenuous. It’s the intimate connection between artist and muse, “a role that for both of us was interchangeable,” that drives Smith’s writing in a powerful, gracious way.
So in response to any claims of romanticizing here–which often has a negative connotation–I would say instead that Smith is aestheticizing. This book is about art and intimacy that are inherent to two individuals, art and intimacy that they fight hard for. Aspects of life that exist outside of the artistic evolution of Smith and Mapplethorpe are dismissed because they are a given: they are merely an expected presence in the face of the unmatched aesthetic/personal connection that the pair shared.
Read this book: It will make you want to make things.
Tags: Just Kids, New York, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe
Awesome review Melina. I heard Smith being interviewed on NPR when the book first came out and she was fantastic. I told myself I’d pick up the book then, but never did. Now I’m really going to. Thanks!
thanks, Asa…let me know what you think.
[...] haven’t read it yet, but Melina did, and she said it was, well, [...]