⋙ PDF Free Just Kids Patti Smith 9780066211312 Books

Just Kids Patti Smith 9780066211312 Books

Download As PDF : Just Kids Patti Smith 9780066211312 Books

Just Kids Patti Smith 9780066211312 Books

I didn't even know who Patti Smith was. I know I got her confused with Patty Smyth. I definitely didn't know who Robert Maplethorpe was. Turns out, I did know who Patti Smith was, but I had to google "Patti Smith most popular song' and got "Because the Night" and it was all clear.

The point is, this book was on my radar because I'd heard great things about the book, not because I knew who anybody was. What a tale! I'm not even sure something like this could ever happen again. It was the late '60's early '70's (my favorite time period musically, incidentally) and Patti was a literal starving artist on the streets of New York. No job, no direction, no place to live. A creative being wanting to create but not knowing how it should manifest.

She meets Robert Maplethorpe and they embark on a lifelong friendship/love affair. They lived in the time and place of Jimi, Janis, and Andy Warhol. Just Kids, literally starving. It was a great adventure.

Patti was lucky enough to have a couple breaks musically, and Robert not long behind her with his art. I can't say I'm a fan of either of their work. I looked at Robert's art after reading the book and thought no wonder he struggled.

I thought a lot about making a living, and what artists have to do to survive. These tortured people who literally must create, have to get day jobs at bookstores. Barely scraping enough money together to share a hot dog with a friend. It's sad. Behind every Jimi there are thousands of other Jimis.

Anyway, I was engrossed in this tale of friendship and life in the summer of love and beyond. The audio was read by Patti and that itself was an experience. Beautifully written passages spoken in a strong New Jersey accent. Drawing was Drawling. Piano was piana. Laughing was laughin'. Sunday was Sundee. It was a little weird at first, but ultimately gave an intimacy to the story. Her story. I couldn't put it down, and I sobbed at the end.

This would be a great audio for people who don't normally do audio because if you wander off it's easy to find your way back in. Loved it!


Tags : Just Kids [Patti Smith] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In <em>Just Kids, </em> Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies.  An honest and moving story of youth and friendship,Patti Smith,Just Kids,Ecco,006621131X,Artists, Architects, Photographers,Composers & Musicians,Mapplethorpe, Robert,Photographers - United States,Photographers;United States;Biography.,Poets, American - 20th century,Rock musicians - United States,Smith, Patti,Women poets;20th century;Biography.,Women rock musicians;United States;Biography.,20th century,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Artists, Architects, Photographers,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY General,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Music,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Women,BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY,Biography,Biography & Autobiography,Biography & AutobiographyPersonal Memoirs,Biography & AutobiographyWomen,Biography Autobiography,BiographyAutobiography,Composers & Musicians - General,GENERAL,General Adult,Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups,New York,Non-Fiction,Personal Memoirs,Photographers,ROCK MUSIC,United States,Women,Women poets,Women poets;20th century;Biography.,Women rock musicians,Women rock musicians;United States;Biography.,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Artists, Architects, Photographers,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY General,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Music,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Women,Biography & AutobiographyPersonal Memoirs,Biography & AutobiographyWomen,Composers & Musicians - General,Personal Memoirs,Women,Biography Autobiography,20th century,Biography,Photographers,United States,Women poets,Women rock musicians,Biography And Autobiography,Rock Music,Biography & Autobiography,BiographyAutobiography,Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups

Just Kids Patti Smith 9780066211312 Books Reviews

“My small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination.” This is Smith’s description of her long, improvised childhood prayers to God, and also an apt initiation into the world of her hardscrabble beginnings in New York City. Hunger, homelessness, chance meetings with Robert Mapplethorpe that bloom into a union, and their insistence on being artists in spite of having neither a path nor the means to tread it — this is as good as origin stories get. The prose has earnestness and poetry, as well as a vivid portrayal of an epoch of creativity and turmoil. A beautiful book. Read it to expand your heart.
-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., Happiness Engineer and author of The Tao of Dating The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible, and Should I Go to Medical School? An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine
4.5 Stars

”It was the summer Coltrane died. The summer of “Crystal Ship.” Flower children raised their empty arms and China exploded the H-bomb. Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey. AM radio played “Ode to Billie Joe.” There were riots in Newark, Milwaukee, and Detroit. It was the summer of Elvira Madigan, the summer of love. And in this shifting, inhospitable atmosphere, a chance encounter change the course of my life.”

It was that summer when Patti Smith met Robert Mapplethorpe. Just Kids is a love story of these two young people who, against all odds, meet, fall in love, and cling to that love long after they’ve chosen other partners, other ways of life, and love. It’s a love story of the city where they fell in love, and perhaps even a bit of a love story to the art and poetry and music that was created in the course of their love story.

They combined their meager possessions, but money was problematic, they barely made enough money for food – and frequently went without. Extras were out of reach. Books they had already owned were their prized possessions, as was their music limited to those albums they’d brought into this relationship. And still, they were able to enjoy some concerts just by virtue of being in the right place at the right time, or knowing the right person.

”Yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods.”

There are a very few years that they were not in touch, Smith’s focused on her music career, her marriage to Fred “Sonic” Smith, and Mapplethorpe focused on his art, his partner. Time passes, children come along, and when Smith is expecting a second child, they re-establish communication.

”We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was splendor we only partially imagined. No one could speak for these two young people nor tell with any truth of their days and nights together. Only Robert and I could tell it. Our story, as he called it. And having gone, he left the task for me to tell it to you.”

I knew very little about Patti Smith, I knew who she was, is, and that I’ve heard some of her songs, knew she was a musician… beyond that, nothing. So, when this book first came out, and my brother sent me a signed copy of this, along with a few other books, and I vaguely recall seeing it and wondering why he sent it to me. And then, years later, also sent me a signed copy of M Train. I was beginning to feel a little guilty.

I loved this. There’s a bit of that raw energy and the grittiness of living in their early days together, the descriptions of the city, especially at night. The Romeo and Julietness of it all. Beautiful prose.

Their story reminded me of one of my favourite poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s ”Sonnet XXX – Love Is Not All”

”Love is not all it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.”
I didn't even know who Patti Smith was. I know I got her confused with Patty Smyth. I definitely didn't know who Robert Maplethorpe was. Turns out, I did know who Patti Smith was, but I had to google "Patti Smith most popular song' and got "Because the Night" and it was all clear.

The point is, this book was on my radar because I'd heard great things about the book, not because I knew who anybody was. What a tale! I'm not even sure something like this could ever happen again. It was the late '60's early '70's (my favorite time period musically, incidentally) and Patti was a literal starving artist on the streets of New York. No job, no direction, no place to live. A creative being wanting to create but not knowing how it should manifest.

She meets Robert Maplethorpe and they embark on a lifelong friendship/love affair. They lived in the time and place of Jimi, Janis, and Andy Warhol. Just Kids, literally starving. It was a great adventure.

Patti was lucky enough to have a couple breaks musically, and Robert not long behind her with his art. I can't say I'm a fan of either of their work. I looked at Robert's art after reading the book and thought no wonder he struggled.

I thought a lot about making a living, and what artists have to do to survive. These tortured people who literally must create, have to get day jobs at bookstores. Barely scraping enough money together to share a hot dog with a friend. It's sad. Behind every Jimi there are thousands of other Jimis.

Anyway, I was engrossed in this tale of friendship and life in the summer of love and beyond. The audio was read by Patti and that itself was an experience. Beautifully written passages spoken in a strong New Jersey accent. Drawing was Drawling. Piano was piana. Laughing was laughin'. Sunday was Sundee. It was a little weird at first, but ultimately gave an intimacy to the story. Her story. I couldn't put it down, and I sobbed at the end.

This would be a great audio for people who don't normally do audio because if you wander off it's easy to find your way back in. Loved it!