Patti Smith Wants You to Take a (Literary) Ride on the ‘M Train’
Patti Smith, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and author of the National Book Award-winning memoir Just Kids, has announced that she is releasing a sequel. The new book, M Train, is set to be published by Knopf on October 6.
The memoir interweaves Smith’s artistic and personal lives: Black-and-white Polaroids taken by Smith are featured alongside the prose.
While Just Kids traces Smith’s relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, M Train reportedly frames Smith’s life through 18 influential locations, or “stations.’’ In a statement, Knopf called the work “a coffee-saturated odyssey into the mind of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafes and haunts she has worked in around the world.’’
Since Smith hinted at the impending sequel in 2012, having a concrete date of publication in sight is a relief for her fans. Still, October feels very, very far away.
To help make the wait more bearable, here are 10 quotes from Just Kids for old fans or new.
1. “The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It’s the artist’s responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.’’
2. “No one expected me. Everything awaited me.’’
3. “I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth.’’
4. “We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone.’’
5. “Everything distracted me, but most of all, myself’’
6. “He contained, even at an early age, a stirring and the desire to stir.’’
7. “It seemed as if the whole of the world was slowly being stripped of innocence. Or maybe I was seeing a little too clearly.’’
8. “He wasn’t certain whether he was a good or bad person. Whether he was altruistic. Whether he was demonic. But he was certain of one thing. He was an artist. And for that he would never apologize.’’
9. “When you hit a wall, just kick it in.’’
10. “To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-charged.’’
As a bonus, here’s a gem from Smith’s National Book Award acceptance speech on November 17, 2010:
“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.’’
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