In “Just Kids” Patti Smith shares how she and Robert Mapplethorpe grew into artists in New York City. The work is partially a biography—it shares a batch of childhood memories before depositing her, penniless, on the streets of New York. But the bulk of it revolves around her relationship with Mapplethorpe, who was her early lover, long-time muse and lifelong friend.
After a couple chance meetings in the city, the two “kids” are off, aspiring together through hunger pangs and rented rooms. While Smith is best known for her music—the hook that drew me into the book—that takes up little space here. We pass through her first performance with Lenny Kaye, speed through the formation of her band, but music is hardly a focus.
Instead, the book is more concerned with other art. Smith dabbles with drawing and poetry as Mapplethorpe explores found art and finally photography. They fall short on rent, soak up inspiration from their fellow dreamers at the Chelsea Hotel and Max’s. Finally they catch on with patrons who fund them to success.
The setting is rich, but Smith captures it only in outlines. The characters they encounter are defined mostly through what they wear or how they decorate their place. “Just Kids” is almost a journal—then I went to France, then Robert got the studio, then I started seeing Jim Carroll. It doesn’t illuminate its subjects or completely draw them into the larger narrative of Smith and Mapplethorpe’s evolution.
In a strange failing for a poet, the prose is relatively flat. When Smith does aim for transcendence, she settles on a kind of New Age affirmation instead, listing mystic signs and signals that augured their rise like some kind of pretentious pre-modern.
Even the hard times Smith lays out seem almost quaint today. They were hungry because they didn’t want to work. They dedicated themselves nearly full time to art while living in New York City. Smith inhabits an apartment paid for by Blue Oyster Cult keyboardist Allen Lanier; many of her meals were picked up by the wealthy Sam Wagstaff, who also bought Mapplethorpe a loft to work in.
None of this is to condemn Smith’s art. But it’s frustrating that she’s unable to evoke her self-creation in her own memoir. She comes off as an instinctual artist, and maybe it’s that lack of introspection that enabled her to achieve what she did. But she also remains at arm’s reach in her own story, pushing off understanding with the details of another lunch.