The book is like one of many books I've read in the past that chronicles the complexity of an artistic scene, which means referencing a lot of names that - if you don't know - kind of just wiz by you like gravel spraying up from a dirt road.
See:
Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life
Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties
A Different Kind of Intimacy by Karen Findley
Beyond that, Smith's chronicle really feels like a sort of remembering, especially the way she drifts in and out of scenes. She'll do a pretty extensive build up to what feels like a kind of important event and then kind of just look the other way and fall into another place and another time, which I kind of liked.
One thing I thought, as I was reading, is that IF I had been around back then, you know, all amazing and hanging out in the back room of Max's, I don't think I would have liked Patti Smith very much. Even though I connected to her intense symbolism, and I think we would have been able to compare notes of all the stuff we were hoarding and why (magical objects galore), I can't imagine having a conversation with someone that intensely into their own poetic self and process.
Not that I'm thinking Patti Smith is missing out, you understand.
I just sort of pictured her in the corner of these vibrant rooms full of the amazing queers, the Jackie Curtis's and so on, in her little black outfits, pinning for French monuments and books I'll never read.
Again, I'm sure that's way cooler than what I'd be doing at Max's (like trying to steal Jackie Curtis).
Just saying, I guess.
I'd love to hear what other people thought of this book, actually. Which made me super sad as I finished it, and thumbed through these haunting black and white photos while my plane skittered down onto the runway and the woman next to me finished watching GOING THE DISTANCE for the second time.
mariko