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1-Page Summary of Just Kids

Overall Summary

Just Kids is a memoir written by American musician Patti Smith, who won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010. It documents her relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The book begins and ends with Smith learning of Mapplethorpe’s death from AIDS in 1989. Raised in “rural South Jersey”, she felt an early desire to be an artist, but was discouraged by her family. At age 19, she left home and moved to New York City hoping to meet friends at Pratt Institute; instead she met Robert Mapplethorpe, a 19-year-old boy raised in a conservative Catholic household on Long Island who knew he wanted to be an artist as soon as he could draw well enough at age eight or nine years old. He also made jewelry for his mother because he enjoyed making things that people would wear around their necks and wrists. They became lifelong friends after meeting through mutual acquaintances when they were both nineteen years old.

In the summer of 1967, Smith and Mapplethorpe meet. They have a one-night stand that turns into an affair. They move in together in a crummy apartment where they both work on their art projects. Though they’re broke and often eat stale cookies for dinner, they are happy because they support each other’s goals to become artists who make money from their art alone.

The author describes Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe’s relationship, which began when they met in the late 1960s. They were both artists who had a lot in common. They supported each other’s work and collaborated on projects together. However, their relationship was sometimes volatile; for example, at one point Mapplethorpe pushed her away because he thought he might be gay. He contracted gonorrhea while traveling to San Francisco for an art show but then returned to New York City with Smith after making a promise not to leave her side until they could stand on their own two feet again by moving into their own apartments. After that, they continued working closely with each other as before, although now they also became involved romantically (Mapplethorpe dated Sam Wagstaff). Eventually Smith published some of her poetry books and recorded songs using guitars and drum machines; she later added backing bands and performed rock-and-roll shows around the country under the name Patti Smith Group. In 1986 Mapplethorpe was diagnosed with AIDS, so his life ended shortly afterward—but not before he took several photographs of Smith that appear on her Dream of Life album cover.

Foreword

Smith starts the book with her friend Robert Mapplethorpe’s death. She was sleeping when he died, but she knew that he had passed away because of his breathing patterns on the phone earlier in the night. Smith goes to her study and looks at a book by Odilon Redon while listening to an opera by Tosca. Later, Mapplethorpe’s youngest brother calls Smith and tells her about Robert’s passing.

Summary: “Monday’s Children”

Patti Smith was born in 1946 during a snow storm. Her father says she was sick, but he kept her alive by holding her over a hot bathtub. Smith’s mother had another child soon after, and they moved to Philadelphia from Chicago. They lived in temporary housing for soldiers and their families while they waited for their permanent house to be built. As a young girl, Smith liked playing with the neighborhood kids on what they called “The Patch”.

Smith’s mother teaches her a children’s bedtime prayer that asks for God “to keep” the child’s soul. Smith welcomes “the notion of God” as “a presence above us, in continual motion”, but she wonders what the soul is. Her mother agrees to let Smith compose her own nightly prayers, and Smith spends a lot of time sick in bed praying with books and using her imagination. Later, she loves reading more than anything else because it helps expand her sense of imagination through books and stories.