From the National Book Award–winning author of Just Kids: a “sublime collection of true stories … and wild imaginings that take us to the very heart of who Patti Smith is” (Vanity Fair), told through the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. Patti Smith calls this bestselling work “a roadmap to my life.”M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every … Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, we travel to Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico; to the fertile moon terrain of Iceland; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York’s Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; to the West 4th Street subway station, filled with the sounds of the Velvet Underground after the death of Lou Reed; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima.
Woven throughout are reflections on the writer’s craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smith’s life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith.
Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature, and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable multiplatform artists at work today.
Featuring a postscript with five new photos from Patti Smith
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Patti shares her thoughts and intimacies. Sublime, haunting, and imbued with inescapable loss, joys, and reflections on the pathos of life. Literary sakura. I took this book all over the world while living out of a suitcase and writing my own first poetry collections and novels. This book was one of several gold threads I used to sew my shattered existence back together. Grateful for this important art and testament.
Patti is able to somehow accurately conjure the unspoken thrill of sitting in a quiet cafe, drinking coffee, and writing. Never has a piece of rye bread and olive oil sounded more intoxicating. Or Rockaway Beach. Or Detroit. Or the TV series “The Killing.”
What’s so marvelous about Patti and her writing is that she is completely and totally herself. Wherever she is and however she’s describing it we feel like we’re seeing some part of her true soul. Even when talking about her love for “Law and Order” it’s uniquely soulful.
She opens up in such an honest and welcoming way that you end up feeling like you’re sitting right there next to her and she’s talking directly to you.
Patti’s love of life and experience becomes contagious. Her depictions of anxiety, melancholy, and loss never feel suffocating because she genuinely accepts them as part of the human journey. The scars become adornments. The pain becomes character. And the love makes it bearable.
There will always be a special place in my heart for Patti Smith. Throughout my life, her music, her words, her every action have always been an inspiration to me. And to so many others.
I am reading an autographed copy of this book, it is a hardback, and I have scribbled notes throughout it. Destroying any value her signature was worth, but it was never about the money. It was all about having a piece, having it was all.
My notes that desecrate this book? Fluency of words, Dreamscape, another reality, Stream of Consciousness, everything I am sure you would expect?
Originally I had a non signed copy, and then I watched the documentary about her, the name escapes me now. Patti opened her heart and displayed many treasures she owned, Robert Mapplethorpes ashes, the guitar Sam Shepard bought her and so forth. Although I own many autographed books, purely, often found and bought unaware of the signatures. I don’t normally put much value on them, but I was seized with a need to have this autograph!
Anyway, this book, like Cohen’s early work, is woven in dreams and seems very surreal in shape and feel. There is Magick within words, more than just a sense of Immortality, but true Magick.
The book/disjointed story is about journeys/voyages and the stillness and silence of thought. It begins as we are told she had wanted to own a Café, but instead, Fred, her late husband stole her away and made a nest for them far away.
There is no timeline, merely ghosts of thoughts and memories crowding the pages and a long series of intriguing stories that, if they were not Patti’s, I would have difficulty believing.
A trip to the CDC and a meeting with Bobby Fischer, in particular, intrigued me.
The CDC is the Continental Drift Club, an organisation dedicated to Alfred Wegener, a limited number of members, by invite only. Each is identified by a number. After attending a CDC meeting, she then meets Bobby Fischer, who begins by insulting her, and the meeting ends with them singing together.
Life is a strange place, and yet, she seems to happily travel through this madness as if that is what should happen?
This book is difficult to rate. It is long and windy and confusing and without time. And yet, it is whimsical and beautiful and funny. But it is not for everyone. It relies on a certain familiarity and respect of the great lady. You need to understand and appreciate her to appreciate this book.
I would suggest starting with Just Kids, then follow with Woolgathering and then consider this little treasure.
Just really lovely prose. I’m not a fan of her music, but everything I’ve read by Ms Smith just warms me up inside, just like her favorite coffee.
I think I will keep this book by my books on writing. It made me want to write. It also made me want to buy a house by the beach and feel better about how much coffee I drink. I was totally lost in her world- but her world was so rich- I sometimes had to put the book down- like you can’t eat an entire box of dark chocolate at once. Smith is really an artist in every sense, and this book evoked so many times and places- but still manages to be current. Lovely read.