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Just Kids
First published 2006 · 528 pages
A tender, poetic elegy to a transformative friendship and the gritty, magical crucible of 1970s bohemian New York.
What it feels like
Reading this memoir feels like sitting in a sunlit, dust-moted room while a poet recounts the most sacred chapter of her youth. It unfolds at a steady, reverent pace, wrapping the reader in a mood that is both fiercely romantic and deeply elegiac. The prose is incantatory and precise, elevating the gritty reality of starving artists in 1970s New York into a modern myth of devotion and creation. It is less about the mechanics of becoming famous and entirely about the crucible of a soulmate friendship that shapes an artist's vision. This book will profoundly move romantics, creatives, and anyone who has ever been young, broke, and sustained by a shared, impossible dream. It leaves you with a bittersweet ache and a renewed reverence for the people who help us become ourselves.
- Mood
- nostalgic
- bohemian
- bittersweet
- gritty-yet-magical
- Tone
- reverent
- elegiac
- earnest
- tender
- poetic
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- artistic devotion · soulmate friendships · the romance of poverty · grief and memory · coming of age
- The writing
- Lyrical, incantatory, and precise, reading more like a long prose poem than a standard autobiography.
- The arc
- Moves from the wide-eyed, hungry optimism of youth to a profound, bittersweet acceptance of loss and enduring love.
- Who it's for
- Romantics, artists, and anyone who has ever been young, broke, and fiercely devoted to a creative dream or a transformative friendship.
Content notes
- grief
- terminal illness
- drug use
- poverty
About the book
In this memoir, singer-songwriter Patti Smith shares tales of New York City: the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's and Strand bookstores and her new life in Brooklyn with a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe--the man who changed her life with his love, friendship, and genius.
Description from Open Library.
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