Patti Smith's new memoir Just Kids reminds me a bit of Bob Dylan's pseudo-autobiography Chronicles because Smith, like Dylan, transcends the "celebrity autobiography" genre so beautifully. Just Kids is a prose-poem to her lean early years in New York City, a love-letter to her lifelong friend Robert Mapplethorpe, and an argument that art saves lives and makes lives. In case you don't know, Patti Smith is a writer, photographer, and musician best known for the punk rock records she made in the late 1970s. But anyone with even a passing interest in art, music, New York City, and/or la vie boheme ought to read Just Kids which is such a deeply humane piece of work, an artist's memoir that somehow NEVER slips into pretentiousness. So glad I've finally gotten around to reading this.
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