In Just Kids Patti Smith provides an intimate and poetic memoir of her friendship and creative partnership with the artist and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The book, which won the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction, takes readers on a journey through their young lives during the transformative cultural period of the late 1960s and 1970s in New York City.
Hitting the Streets of New York: The Beginning of Their Story
Just Kids is really about two artists clawing their way into a life of art. A 19-year-old from rural New Jersey, Patti Smith sets out for New York to become an artist. While browsing the stacks at a bookstore, she runs into Robert Mapplethorpe an aspiring artist himself, from a conservative Catholic family on Long Island.
It moves effortlessly into the lifelong relationship between the two, which becomes the foundation of her memoir. The first chapters of the story portray the pair as two artists who are in love and struggling.
The two of them move in together, share a run-down Brooklyn apartment, and create work in relative poverty. They struggle with adversity but find happiness and fulfillment in each other and their artistic work together. Their relationship, transitioning from lovers to creative partners, is a one-of-a-kind bond you cannot categorize.
Life in the Chelsea Hotel: A Bohemian Paradise
As Smith and Mapplethorpe dissolve into their artistic lives, they take up residence in the legendary Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan a bohemian enclave for artists, musicians, poets. Just Kids relies heavily on The Chelsea Hotel, which opens up a colorful artistic world and brings us intimate with industry heavyweights from Andy Warhol to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, etc. The couple, steeped in the cultural flux of the era, work their way into the works and ways of art.
While living in New York, Smith and Mapplethorpe help each other to grow as artists. As Smith discovers her instrument through poetry and, ultimately, music, Mapplethorpe develops his craft in photography specifically a focus on controversial images that would lead to notoriety.
The two maintain a friendship that serves as a rock while they are both blasted away by the winds of personal and artistic growth (even as their bodies and minds drift further apart).
The Complexities of Identity and Sexuality
An overarching theme in Just Kids is the search for identity, a struggle both personal and artistic. Robert wrestling with his sexual orientation is another main thread that runs throughout the novel. When Faith arrived in the major leagues, his internal conflict reached a fever pitch.
Raised in an incredibly religious Catholic home, George feared his attraction to other men. While he and Smith are romantically involved for a while, Mapplethorpe finally realizes that he is gay and embarks on romantic relationships with men, though his connection to Smith endures.
The understanding and acceptance Patti has for Robert’s journey speaks to the heartiness of their own bond. As she begins her rise to stardom, so does Robert go on to eventually land his career as a photographer. Encouraged by Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso she begins to perform her poetry in rock clubs, before going on to music career.
Her 1975 debut album Horses places her as one of the foremost pioneers of the punk rock movement, but no matter where Smith went or when she would perform, it all came back to her relationship with Mapplethorpe.
The Tragic End: Robert’s Illness and Death
Fittingly, the memoir culminates with Robert Mapplethorpe’s diagnosis of AIDS in the late 1980s. With Just Kids Patti Smith, she perfectly details their lives as artists trying to find their way in the world and his slow decline and eventual death due to illness.
Patti has been visiting him as often as possible, given her own family responsibilities and career, to offer help and love in his last days on this planet. These moments fragment into a deeply emotional narrative, like a slow and gut-wrenching loss of a lifelong friend.
Mapplethorpe died in 1989, closing the book with a void in Smith’s life. Yet, more importantly, her memories, encounters, and collaborations with him remain immortalized in her writing.
Themes and Cultural Impact
Just Kids is ultimately a nod to the love between two friends, art, and the city of New York. What it does very successfully is convey the spirit and feel of a time when music was breaking new ground and forging different artistic paths. It is a narrative lined with want, and heartache, and memorializing all the time she spent with Mapplethorpe.
The rest of her memoir meditates on that theme, the modern writer all too willing to throw herself onto that pyre, because there is art in them thar flames. Art was not merely a job but a vocation for Smith and Mapplethorpe, pursued with an all-consuming commitment that often came too ar a personal cost for financial security. While one of the main staples is discussing identity and sexuality.
Through Smith, we see that Mapplethorpe was a complex individual and she portrays him as deeply troubled by his own struggle with sexuality but loves him despite the handcuffs society places on us in terms of gender ideals.
The Bottom Line
‘Just Kids Patti Smith’ falls into memoir, but not just any two artists. It is a tale of dedication, innovation, and perseverance in the face of adversity. Dive into Patti Smith’s memories brought to life through her poetic prose and you will find an intimate look at the story of late-60s/early 70s New York filtered through the macro lens of the progress of western culture.
The book is an essential read for anyone who loves art, music or the time period. A heartwarming tribute to the lasting bonds of friendship, imagination, and the stories we love. everyone reads Patti Smith. Patti Smith ensures that the story of her and Robert Mapplethorpe will be revered for ages to come, by way of some stunning writing.
