NOW READING: Just Kids, by Patti Smith

Just like my travels lately, my book reading patterns have been as such: finish one, immediately pick up another. After finishing a humorous travel novel called “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?” by Thomas Khonstamm, I’ve immediately picked up Patti Smith’s 2010 memoir, “Just Kids”. While it has been a quick transition from silly to serious between the two, I’ve welcomed the change. I have an affinity towards reading about the suffering artist (e.g.: Bukowski, Plath, Kerouac, Di Prima, etc.) so this book slides right in as a great leisure read. Months ago I did some research on a piece in our private collection by Robert Mapplethorpe. The Center Museum has one of his flower photographs in its possession and it needed a didactic label.  I poured over all the information I could find available about the artist and, much to the disapproval of my smug security guards, found myself completely enamored with Mapplethorpe and his work.  This book is yet another avenue of information that is equally telling about both artists, but is written first-hand in pure, poetic, Patti Smith-style.  So far, I’ve only just begun to get into Patti’s move to NYC, where she unknowingly meets Mapplethorpe in passing, and I can’t seem to put this one down. Maybe it’s just that time of the month, or maybe it’s my recent entrance into the online dating world (don’t judge!), but I’m feeling especially drawn to rom-antics this month and “Just Kids” is a sure supplement for that kind of disease. Pick it up, order it online, borrow it from a friend, do whatever you got to do. . . . Just get your mitts on it somehow and go get your bohemia on! Tell the Kids I sent you.

A more formal review. . .