The design of the hardcover version of this book captivated me when I first saw it. Having a nook and being leery of spending the money for the hardcover, I waited until the book went into paperback before buying it. I'm sorry I waited. Patti Smith's Just Kids is a delight, especially to anyone who knows anything about Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorp, modern art, the beginnings of punk rock, or New York in the late 1960s through the 1980s.
Smith's writing is sublime. She really nails every emotion. From the first page, I felt like she grabbed my heart and didn't let it go until the very last word. Her description of her circumstances and the serendipity when she got notice that Mapplethorp died of complications from AIDS is wrenching. You can picture the scene in her home, the emptiness in her heart at the news and the fitting scene in which she heard it and digested it. We read the end before the beginning, and while we know the result, what we're heading toward, the ride is magnificent.
I knew very little about Patti Smith as an artist, musician and writer. I knew a little more about Mapplethorp, especially the controversy of his work over the years. I don't love all of his photographs, yet I have to say I love what they all stand for, what Mapplethorp was trying to do and what he accomplished in art and photography during his all-too-brief life. Smith captures the essence of Robert Mapplethorp as a human being and all of the complex and seemingly juxtaposed ways really being human involves. We see a pure friendship, a true intimacy that is so rare in this world. She lets us into that world a little bit, but also without coming across as celebrity tell-all or expose. We never feel she has betrayed Mapplethorp's confidence. By the end of the book, we, too, feel the loss of Mapplethorp as an artist and person.
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