WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
The iconic book by Patti Smith, in which she recounts her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe: a tribute to friendship whose pages, full of life and humor, bring us back the flavor of a New York where almost anything was possible.
It was the summer Coltrane died. [ ] The hippies raised their empty arms and China detonated the hydrogen bomb. Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar in Monterey. [...] It was the summer of love. And in that changing and inhospitable climate, a chance meeting changed the course of my life. It was the summer I met Robert Mapplethorpe.
Synopsis
It happened in July 1967 and they were children, but from then on Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe forged a friendship that would only end with the death of the great photographer in 1989. This splendid memoir, winner of the National Book Award, tells of the shared life of two artists, both enthusiastic and passionate, who strode across the outskirts of New York to reach the nerve center of new art. That is how they ended up settling in the Chelsea Hotel and became the protagonists of a world now gone, where Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol and his crowd reigned, and the great music bands that marked the last years of the twentieth century were created, while AIDS wreaked havoc.
Far from being a sad and nostalgic book, Just Kids is a tribute to unrestrained friendship, and its pages, full of life and humor, bring us back the flavor of that great city where there was a time when almost anything was possible.
