| Just Kids |  | Author: Patti Smith
Publisher: Ecco
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy New: $14.53
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Rating:  83 reviews
Sales Rank: 4,322
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1ST
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 006621131X
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780066211312
Publication Date: January 1, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
BRAND NEW 2010 HARDBACK EDITION. SOME SHELFWEAR MARKS. OVERSTOCK MARK..
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2010: Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe weren't always famous, but they always thought they would be. They found each other, adrift but determined, on the streets of New York City in the late '60s and made a pact to keep each other afloat until they found their voices--or the world was ready to hear them. Lovers first and then friends as Mapplethorpe discovered he was gay, they divided their dimes between art supplies and Coney Island hot dogs. Mapplethorpe was quicker to find his metier, with a Polaroid and then a Hasselblad, but Smith was the first to fame, transformed, to her friend's delight, from a poet into a rock star. (Mapplethorpe soon became famous too--and notorious--before his death from AIDS in 1989.) Smith's memoir of their friendship, Just Kids, is tender and artful, open-eyed but surprisingly decorous, with the oracular style familiar from her anthems like "Because the Night," "Gloria," and "Dancing Barefoot" balanced by her powers of observation and memory for everyday details like the price of automat sandwiches and the shabby, welcoming fellow bohemians of the Chelsea Hotel, among whose ranks these baby Rimbauds found their way. --Tom Nissley
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 83
 Portrait Of An Artistic Bond September 6, 2010
Mark Stevens (Denver)
I think the title says it all--thinking back on time when two soon-to-be famous artists were just kids, trying a variety of pursuits, putting their lives together, knowing they needed at least some rudimentary form of income to live in New York and pushing themselves to take risks in processing the world around them into art.
"Just Kids" is autobiography, yes, but it skips like a stone across the surface of events. It's also part tribute to Patti Smith's soul mate, Robert Mapplethorpe, and to the bond the two fashioned. "Just Kids" focuses on how their individual art forms--poetry and music for Patti, photography for Robert--evolved. In each of their fields, both artists pushed the envelope. Patti is enshrined in punk lore for a reason--the musical edge matched the jagged, raw and guttural poetry. She worked at it. Robert saw things in still life and people that others could not, did not. He pushed all boundaries of taste. "Just Kids" tracks how the former altar boy's approach to photography developed as he discovered himself. It's amazing to think that a "chance encounter" led to their deep personal relationship but that's what New York (or any big city) is probably all about.
The writing is atmospheric and light. Punk scholars and historians, search elsewhere. There are some evocative tidbits throughout--Patti running into Jimi Hendrix, Patti with Sam Shepard, Patti with Lenny Kaye and hanging out with Todd Rundgren, Jim Carroll, Tom Verlaine, Richard Lloyd and many others. (If this era of rock is of any interest to you, "Just Kids" is worth reading for the name-checking alone.) Patti Smith seems to have been at the center of it all but the details are fairly sketchy--and that's just fine. But "Just Kids" is about the spirit of their friendship--running off for a day of goofing around at Coney Island--not encyclopedic details.
"Occasionally I read poetry at a bar, but would spend most of my allotted time sparring with drunken patrons. These experiences did much to sharpen my Johnny Carson repartee but little to advance the communication of poetry. Lenny joined me the first time I played at the West End Bar, where Jack Kerouac and his buddies had once written and drunk, but not necessarily in that order. We made no money, but at the end of the night Jane rewarded us with a great piece of news. We had been asked to open for Phil Ochs at Max's Kansas City in the last days of the year. Lenny Kaye and I would spend both of our December birthdays and New Year's Eve merging poetry and rock and roll."
Patti recalls her own career development and recalls as Mapplethorpe's circle of friends, benefactors and fans grows, too. They were close friends and partners until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989. "Just Kids" is about that special bond between the two of them. A boy who loved Michelangelo and a "dreamy, somnambulant" girl.
 Excellent Portrait of Two Artists September 1, 2010
Moira L. Bogley (Washington, D.C. United States)
Excellent, excellent book. It is such a wonderful portrait of two hungry, emerging artists and their intimate and true journey. Patti Smith is a natural storyteller. She has created such an engaging memoir detailing both her and Robert Mapplethorpe's emergence as creators and as wide eyed children discovering and stepping out into the world around them. You can feel the grittiness of New York under her pen as well as the distinct moment in time, before cell phoines and the Internet, when you met people as people and could bump into Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix or a beat poet of the time and hold a conversation with the person absent the ever present "star" label that is so freely branded on everyone now. Patti Smith holds a time capsule treasure in her mind and heart that she has shared with us. Bravo. LOVED it.
Gorgeous memoir August 31, 2010
lizziem
Gorgeous, lucid, and loving memoir of Smith's early days in New York with Robert Mapplethorpe. The intensity of their relationship is laid bare from the first sentence, and the tenderness with which Smith writes is stunning and profound. Many fascinating people along the way -- Sam Sheppard, Andy Warhol, Ginsberg... but none more fascinating than Smith and Mapplethorpe themselves. It's also an extraordinary glimpse into finding your way as an artist in this world -- not an easy thing to relate, but Smith does it gracefully, with no hype or self-consciousness. My favorite book of the past year.
Patti Smith and Me August 30, 2010
Harriette Knight
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I just finished reading Patti Smith's book Just Kids and I loved it so much I just had to share this story.
In 1973, my boyfriend was in the band Eightballs, and every Sunday night they shared the bill with the New York Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center in NYC. I was in college at the time, but I would hop on the bus outside the school gates and take the 2 hour ride into Manhattan, pick up the subway at Port Authority, exit on 4th by the Waverly Theatre, and then walk the 8 blocks or so to the Mercer Arts Center. By then it was nighttime and in the winter it was cold.
The night would open with an unknown poet named Patti Smith. She would sit on the floor playing a toy piano and read her poetry and sometimes sing a little diddy. Her entourage included a woman I thought was her girlfriend. Patti wore all black and had a beatnik vibe about her. She was not friendly towards me or my friend Janet who was the girlfriend of the bass player of Eightballs, (Janet and I are still friends to this day), and quite honestly, we did not extend ourselves towards her. In truth, Patti Smith seemed kind of scary and off limits. After her set, she would take off, and a band from Long Island called Teenage Lust would do their set complete with red boas and black lingerie.
My impression of Patti Smith at the time was that she was a lesbian drug addict. What I found out from reading her book was that not only was she as straight as an arrow in both drugs, drink, and sexuality, the woman I thought was her lover was actually her sister.
Patti Smith's book, Just Kids, is brilliantly written. As she tells her tale of love and life with Robert Mapplethorpe, I am sorry I didn't take the moment to smile and say hello back in the days of the Mercer Arts Center. I was 17 at the time, and more interested in dancing and boyfriends, and college life. I had no idea what was happening in Patti Smith's world which was full of dedication to art and poetry. We really were existing on two completely different planes. However, our paths did cross, and I am grateful I had a glimpse of her journey firsthand. It turns out that we are both from New Jersey (me, north, she south) and come from close knit and supportive families.
Just Kids is truly a love story. A love story where the leading character is art. It is beautifully written and heartfelt. I can still picture Patti Smith so vividly from back then, and after reading her story I feel honored that she opened herself up for all the world to see, hear, and feel. Thank you, Patti.
 Just Kids August 30, 2010
A. MacFarlane (Burtonsville, MD United States)
This memoir was quite badly written--like a church tract that would only appeal to the faithful. Fortunately, for me, I count myself among those faithful.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 83
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