Just Kids

Patti Smith wrote a memoir last year about her life with the late artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.  Without any praise from me I will mention the book won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010 and has been exalted in every review I have read for the book.  I decided to pick it up (download it) this week.

I vaguely knew who Patti Smith was before reading this book.  They called her the Godmother of Punk and she wrote the amazing song Dancing Barefoot.  That's all I knew.  What I didn't know was that she and Robert Mapplethorpe had a life together as two lovers in 1970's New York making art and barely scraping by. 

Also, and this most important to me, Ms. Smith is a phenomenal writer.  The introduction alone blew me away.  I highly recommend Just Kids.