just kids

can't recommend this book enough

I don’t need to write a review of this book.  It has already gained high praise from many critics including winning the national book award for nonfiction.  That said, I was surprised by just how incredible the book was, and so I wanted to share it with you in hopes that you’ll come to enjoy its magnificence too.

I know that a book is truly exceptional when I read the end and ignoring all my instincts as a writer, I wish that there were another three hundred pages.  I just was not ready to leave the world of this book.

Just Kids is musician/poet/artist Patti Smith’s tale of her life with controversial artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, from the late 1960’s through the 70’s and into the 80’s ending with Roberts death from AIDS in 1989.

Smith begins the book with a brief account of her early life and then like a spider begins to spin an incredible web as she recounts meeting, becoming lovers and best friends with Mapplethorpe.  Her web extends from Brooklyn to the Village and includes the Chelsea Hotel, Max’s: Kansas City, and CBGB’s.  She ensnares and extracts stories of her various encounters; her relationship with Sam Shepard, Allan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Robert Mappelthorpe’s eventual partner Sam Waggstaff.

Her experience as a poet allows her to manipulate language and summon up horrifying, beautiful, and romantic images.  She has an innate ability to let her voice in the book grow from that of a naive twenty year old struggling to find work and places to spend the night in New York.  Then into an experienced mother of two lovingly describing the final time a very ill Mapelthorpe photographed her as she held her newly born daughter Jesse.

The book is uniquely her voice, I could easily hear her speaking it as I read.  While you should despise her as a name dropping pretentious artist, but instead you fall in love with her as she very honestly tells the story.

I usually expect the authors of these books to paint a more flattering picture of themselves, however Smith seemed not to censor herself exposing honest feelings that surprised me. I expected Smith to be an unabashed supporter of Mappelthorpe’s more controversial pictures, instead she freely admits that much of his work challenged her and sometimes found them difficult to understand.

Occasionally in telling the story she would arrive at a period where events were fuzzy and incomplete, she would piece them together brilliantly using small nostalgic vignettes.

The book ends with a mystic meditation on life and death as it becomes a love letter for her and Robert Mapplethorpe, New York city, and an incredible time in America full of good, bad, evil and almost indescribable beauty.

This book was recommended to me by Jaime who read and fell in love with it first.  One selfish evening in LA last year I denied her the opportunity to see Patti Smith at Skylight books and tried to make up for that with a signed first edition copy for Christmas.  I now recommend this book to you, I guaranty you won’t be disappointed. 
posted by: brian snider

age 27

felix doesn't like the cold and neither do i

According to baseball writer Bill James, who I will call the Godfather of Sabermetrics, once noted that most baseball players will have their peak season at age 27.  I assume that he came to this conclusion by way of a spray chart, a line graph and complex mathematic formulas which make my head spin.  What it means is that according to James a player will have matured fully by age 27 and will post his best numbers.  Right now as I write this blog I am 27.  So.... yeah.

Last weekend my wife and I attended the Seattle Mariners fan fest at Safeco field where the main attraction for us was waiting in line two hours outside the stadium in the freezing cold and then another two hours standing inside on the relatively warm suite level waiting for an autograph from the reigning Cy Young award winner Felix Hernandez.  This May Felix will turn 25 and has already won the Cy Young, become the third fastest to reach 1,000 career strike outs, has been selected to the All Star team and in 2005 was the youngest pitcher to appear in the major leagues since 1984, not to mention that he is arguably the best pitcher in the American League.  He won’t even turn 27 for another two seasons.  It goes without saying that this kid makes me feel like a failure.

If Bill James’ assertions are to be believed then Felix has two more years in which to improve and grow his skill set, it also means that this is my peak year and that whatever it is that I do I will have my best year at.  I’m not entirely sure if that means that I will have my best year of writing plays that no one will ever read or if this will be my best year at being lost.  Neither option makes me feel terribly optimistic as I don’t want to have my best year at either of those.  Maybe right now as I sit here on my couch writing this I am having my peak season and if this is it, then I am thoroughly unimpressed.

When I was growing up I was convinced that I was a good enough baseball player and I too would one day have my chance to become a professional.  I would sit in my room and study their cards paying close attention to their ages and subtracting mine from theirs to see how much older than me they were.  I felt that the closer I was to their age the closer I got to being a major leaguer.  When I got older I still would check their ages but now I was much closer to them in age and my dreams had changed, now I was gauging how close to adulthood I was.  At 27 I still check the age of my favorite players but now I find that I am older than many of them and I can’t quite come to terms with the fact that I am an adult even through I don’t feel like it.

My wife and I had Felix sign our baseball and made sure to have him include “2010 Cy Young”.  I will take that ball and put it on a shelf next to memorabilia from stars much older but maybe less talented, stars who I looked up to.  I will spend my age 27 season looking at that ball and I will try to figure out what it is that I am supposed to be having my best season of.  Then again maybe Bill James with all his fancy numbers and mathematical formulas is wrong.  After all plenty of players have peaked in their mid 30’s and many other’s have peaked in their early 20’s only to flame out before they ever reach 27.

Then again there is the 27 club where Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain all died at 27, so I guess I could have that to look forward to also.  Given that proposition I suppose I will take peaking at writing plays that no one will read.

This could be my year, checkout my latest play not coming to a theater near you.