Writing a memoir is a strange pursuit for sure, but even more elusive, at least for me, is reading one. On first read, I invariably forget that the memoir necessarily follows the trajectory of a narrative arc: beginnings that culminate in an early turning point; a series of obstacles and life events leading to a seeming solution, followed by a series leading to seeming disaster; a heightened, intense period racing toward resolution and denouement. It’s a novel!
No, it isn’t! I often have to re-read memoirs to remind myself that the writer lived through all this stuff and then tasked herself with deciphering and erecting that arc—how and why her life inevitably became what it is. In this way, probably every memoirist has to borrow a little from Oedipus. And Smith, in particular, could very well have rendered her narrative along a tragic arc.
All the signposts are staked early and brutally. Her family, though loving, is poor, and her parents work constantly, making outings rare. Her childhood friend dies; she is consistently forced to wear the dunce cap at school (literally); she becomes pregnant, is kicked out of college, ridiculed at her factory job, later by nurses during a harrowing labor, ending in an emergency C-section. At 20, she arrives in New York penniless, planning to stay with friends who never show; she is homeless, hungry, alone. “No one noticed me,” she writes, toward the end of the first chapter.
But she also writes this: “I could move freely…I had faith.”
There, for me, is no better summation of Just Kids. Having read it several times, I am still floored that its arc is firmly anchored on the axis of freedom and faith. Rather than transcribing a narrative that one might legitimately expect not just from a woman whose life is pocked by loss, but also from the very godmother of Punk—a genre and movement defined by fury, denunciation, and impulse—Smith describes even her most harrowing experiences with tenderness and unhurried reflection. Frankly, it feels almost subversive.
Then again, is it surprising that Smith’s story would be subversive? She built a persona of a ferociously independent thinker and performer, yet we learn that, even as a kid, she “dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support side by side.” Her famously tattered, unadorned look disguises a collector, even a thief, of beautiful, talismanic trinkets and lover of sumptuous fabrics. Her apparent sexual androgyny belies a fairly traditional monogamous woman.
“I was a dreamy somnambulant child,” she tells us early on in Just Kids. I wonder if that very dreamy somnambulance is what protected Smith from psychic devastation; what kept her open to ideas, art, and her complex, intimate lifelong relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. Indeed, I wonder if it helped form her bedrock of freedom and faith, seeing her life as having run the arc of possibility instead of tragedy.
I’ve only just begun to read Just Kids– 20 pages in or so– but already Patti’s story, her style, her persona are infusing my own. Already associations, questions, memories arise in my dreamspace. I agree about the “almost subversive” feeling of her writing, in its tenderness and unhurried quality as she lays out for us those childhood and adolescent experiences, some of them excruciating. Perhaps it is subversive in its very power to recall the feelings of my own growing up: a child’s sense of powerlessness, of things that just happen which can’t be controlled or fully understood, outcomes we never imagined (a friend dies!) and that we must somehow absorb and find meaning for. Yet at the same time paradoxically we already know (Patti knew, I knew) that we belong only to ourselves, that each moment is essentially, rightfully, there for us to take hold of and make our own, that life is packed full of important things only we, I, she can do.
I came of age, or began my long coming of age process, as the 60s turned into the 70s, dropping out of college at age 18 in January 1970, as students were shot at Kent State, others occupied Columbia, a whole generation went on strike. I too held that mantra, “I am an artist”, as the only way of making sense of what I was going through. While on the face of things I did not venture nearly as far out in the uncharted waters of artisthood as Patti did, but stuck to a pretty focussed path towards being a classical musician, I did it with a tenacious determination to do it my own way, serially dropping out of music schools, refusing to compromise a certain feeling of what it had to mean to be worthwhile doing at all. I never went near the Chelsea Hotel, but nevertheless I was a part of that transformative generation of seekers and artists.
On my way home after our first class of reading and discussing Just Kids, the music on my car CD player was a compilation given to me by a student of mine, of his favorite Madonna songs, from several decades of her work. A few weeks previously, I’d taken out of the library a similar compilation of Patti Smith, feeling I should get to know her music just a little bit prior to her coming to Bryn Mawr. Yes, I am/was nearly ignorant of both Patti Smith and Madonna, strange as that may seem. My musical interests are eclectic, and I have dipped in and out of keeping up with popular music over the decades of my life, leaving great blank patches I may never fill in. I’ve never been drawn to listen to Madonna, and I would have expected her to be in stark contrast to Patti: slick and commercial rather than raw and uncompromising. So I was kind of astonished to keep hearing in each song by Madonna, quite varied in style and genre, an unmistakable ghost of Patti. It made me want to listen more and deeper to both, to research this influence, to see where it might continue: Lady Gaga? Another artist I don’t know at all, only by reputation a bit. Is there a continuity there, the working/lower-middle class background, the religion in all its ambivalence? Is this obvious or unlikely? I think of Picasso saying that those who came after him would be able to make the kind of thing he did beautiful: as he was the first, inventing, his work had to be rough, powerful before polished.
And where am I in my artistic process? Beginning again, pushing boundaries, reinventing, finding the courage to live on the edge as I enter my own 60s. Yikes! Thank you Patti, and thank you Bryn Mawr for bringing Patti into my radar.
The narrative arc of Smith’s story I agree is so encapsulating that one must remind oneself that these words were reality at some point in time to a real human being, one that will be on our campus in the near future. The detachment between the reader and the storyteller created by absorbing these memories from black and white pages makes it difficult for the reader to see the memoir for what is truly was meant to be, and instead we perceive the word as a novel used for entertainment. Her reflection upon her past experiences and the impact that they created, as well as the causes for each experience, gives her writing a narrative arc that seems unrealistic had she just been verbally recalling memories to friends, but also gives the reader the responsibility of being the receiver of her past knowledge and wisdom formed from her adolescence. Meaning that the formality of her retelling of her past gives the reader the responsibility to learn from the themes she includes in the story. I’m excited to witness Patti Smith talk live so that I can feel like I am reading something from reality, and I can put a tone to the words in order to begin imagining a physical being accompanying her story.
Also, her return to the idea of “faith” and how it helped her overcome her obstacles and gave her chances to become who she is demonstrates an immense amount about her character. When rising above challenges placed in front of her, she reflects upon the experiences as destiny created from a higher power to get her where she is today. Her faith that everything will be okay is so inspiring. She trusted that she could be her own person, as long as she had faith in herself. She also dwells on the idea of being “free.” Freedom is relative to those who define it depending on their own experiences. Her desire to be “free” emotionally and creatively reflects very strongly upon her faith and her personal connection to God and his role in “freeing” her, to create the successful, inspiring person she is in today’s world. With that being said, I really agree with the statement that she “[has] run the arc of possibility instead of tragedy.” She could very easily portray herself as a victim, but she chooses to portray all of her life as stepping stones to “possibility” and what is to come next.
In reading the first section of Just Kids I find myself contemplating what, exactly, allows Patti to navigate the trials of her young life. She has a unique combination of dreaminess and faith that make her a step apart from the world, giving her the objectiveness and introspection to call herself an artist. It seems to me that her devout faith gives her a coping mechanism for all of her struggles in her sense of having been “chosen.” Being chosen by God makes some sense of the hardship she faces, that there’s a purpose to it all, just as creating an identity of herself as an artist gives her a way to understand her own life. I have seen this mirrored in my own life. I cloak myself in the same defenses Patti uses – faith and a sense of oneself as creating meaning from pain. I’ve never considered myself one of God’s chosen, nor do I share Patti’s early devotion to the rituals of Catholicism, but I have taken comfort in an abstract faith that things happen for a reason, and that tomorrow will be better. Just like Patti’s, my faith has been unshakeable. What is most intoxicating to me so far in Just Kids is the way Patti is able to remove herself from, and reflect upon her life. I have always done this, but this is my first encounter with someone who I feel does so in the same manner. Like Patti, I’ve ascribed my ability to look at the events of my life objectively, with a kind of third-person curiosity to the fact that I consider myself a writer, in the same way Patti considers herself an artist. It seems to me that this is her main device to keep herself from despair at the brutal conditions of her early life, and so it is what I have done in my own life to stave off despair.