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Just Kids
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
by Patti Smith
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35 New and Used from: £ 9.49
List Price: £18.99
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| Product Details |
ISBN/ASIN: 0747548404
Release Date:
Sales Rank: 1892
Average Rating: 
Media: Hardcover
Audience Rating:
Product Group: Book
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| Product Description |
| Patti Smith's evocative, honest and moving coming-of-age story of her extraordinary relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe |
| Customer Reviews: Average Rating: 5.0/5 | | An insight of Mapplethorpe: Rating: 5/5 |
| At first I was disappointed that there weren't more photographs in the book, but now I am reading it I love it. I used to listen to Patti Smith's music when I was in my twenties and always wanted to know more about her. I've been prudish and sheared away from Mapplethorpe's photography because of an opinion I'd acquired of him. Photography is one of my passions and I now intend to search out his work and will be looking at it differently because of this book. The book has really given me an insight into who Mapplethorpe was and who he became. It's an easy book to read and I'm really impressed with how Patti lived when she first left home, her relationship with Mapplethorpe and her knowledge. | | Just Kids: Rating: 4/5 |
| Really gives the flavour of Patti and Robert's early days in New York, well written in inimitable Patti style. Gives you a sense of the earliest stirrings of punk in that period just before it emerged with Patti as one of its architects. Also a eulogy/ love story to Robert Mapplethorpe. | | it came: Rating: 5/5 |
| it came when it said it would , in time for my friends birthday, so no worries... happy with the purchase. | | Kindred Spirits: Rating: 5/5 |
Anyone familiar with the lives and works of
Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe will know
that this story cannot have a happy ending.
Mr Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS-related illness
in 1989 drew a sad line underneath a unique
friendship. 'Just Kids' is Mme Smith's memoir of
that extraordinary relationship.
That they were kindred spirits from the start is evident
in Smith's affectionate prose. The energy that held them
together, in love and in adversity, contributed immeasurably
to their respective artistic achievements.
I had not realised how intertwined their creative paths
had been until reading this beautifully written book.
The 'High Priestess Of Punk' is a surprisingly gentle
and sensitive narrator. Starting with tender and vivid
reflections of her childhood in Pennsylvania and New Jersey
we quickly see that she will not linger there for long.
That she was an outsider (albeit a somewhat timid one)
from the start made her eventual pilgrimage to the dark
beating heart of culture in New York City inevitable.
She and Mapplethorpe fell into each others lives as much by
chance as by design. The descriptions of their early struggles
to establish a place for their art are unsentimentally drawn.
Her tales from the bowels of the Hotel Chelsea and accounts of
the brutal pecking order of bohemian wannabes at clubs like
Max's Kansas City are littered with the names of iconic
characters from this colourful period of the city's history.
It is as much a story of a time and place as it is an
excavation of her own emotional and creative trajectory.
That each of them eventually found their place (she in the
world of rock and roll and he in the photographer's studio)
would perhaps not have happened in quite the same way had
their mutual dependency, support, encouragement and love
not had the chance to flourish in those heady early years.
That their lives eventually moved in different directions
did not diminish the intensity and importance of their
primary and enduring attachment to one another.
'Just Kids' is a grown-up tale of two souls in search of meaning.
Highly Recommended.
| | 'Just Kids' reviewed: Rating: 5/5 |
| I thouroughly enjoyed reading this book. It gave me an insight into Patti Smith as a poet and writer and also into Rbert Mapplethorpe. It was very readable and well written. I highly recommend it. | |
