Feb
04
2010
Review: Just Kids
Patti Smith is the godmother of punk, punk long before it was cool to be so. Starting in the mid-seventies, she blended her beat poetry with three-chord rock and very quickly became the kind of artist that millions of others would aspire to. Her new book, Just Kids, hit the bestseller list almost as soon as it was released. A memoir of sorts, the book really traces just one aspect of her life–her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe.
Smith met Mapplethorpe on the streets of New York City when they were both just in their young twenties. They began a lifelong relationship, first as lovers and then as friends. Living the Bohemian lifestyle in New York, they traveled in the same Beatnik circles as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendryx and many of the most prominent artists of the era. Smith’s memoir traces the early days of her relationship with Mapplethorpe when they were lovers, inseparable and much in love, to Mapplethorpe’s death in 1989 when they were just friends.
If you know anything of the life of Robert Mapplethorpe, you’ll know that he was openly and proudly homosexual. But he did not actually become homosexual until his early twenties, a couple of years after he met Smith. And even then he seemed to be conflicted, desiring first both and then neither. But eventually he came to terms with his homosexuality, a fact that was soon reflected in his art, much of which was highly-erotic and homosexual in nature. He began to document through photography much of the ugly underside of the homosexual lifestyle. But he and Smith remained fast friends, continuing to live together and continuing to support one another year after year. As Mapplethorpe became a sought-after photographer and as Smith became a highly-regarded musician, their paths continued to cross and their friendship remained. It remained until 1989 when Mapplethorpe’s lifestyle caught up with him and he died of complications arising from AIDS.
I found Just Kids a profoundly depressing book. I saw Smith and Mapplethorpe fall further and further into their sin, finding delight in the occult, getting more involved in drugs, and Robert increasingly giving himself over to homosexuality. They saw friend after friend fall prey to the Bohemian life they had chosen, succumbing to drugs and disease. Any happiness they found was fleeting, any joy directed only to the immediate gratification of their most self-centered desires. They both wanted to find fame and though both found it, it seems that it just drove happiness and purpose farther and farther away.
It is interesting to note that both grew up in religious households, Smith as the daughter of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mapplethorpe as the son of faithful Roman Catholics. And yet both hated God, mocking him through their art and turning instead to what was Satanic, attributing their success more to Darkness than to Light. And not surprisingly, their life and their work reflects that darkness. The wages of sin is death, the Bible tells us. And the stench of death is all over the lives of both Smith and Mapplethorpe. It’s all over this book.
Verdict: Read it if you’re stuck on a desert island and this is the only book that washes ashore with you.