A Memoir 
 
Patti Smith. 
 
Random House: 2025. First edition. Hardcover in a jacket. Octavo. A few smudges on the jacket. 267 pages. Near fine. 
 
Just Kids has been read by everybody even a little interested in the bohemian life. Smith is no less charismatic and honest here. She details her early years, hit by post-Depression poverty but matched by imagination (she meets the king of tortoises, for starters). Then there's her metamorphosis into a legendary artist, her decades of devotion to her family with Fred "Sonic" Smith, and her return to the road. Smith is hit hard by loss but also, if in a different way, by the smallest moments and objects (which become sacred talismans in the right light and corner - see her in-book photos for proof). 
 
"We courted the invisible together, just as we had both embraced the concept of God as children. The artist seeks the infinite, yet creates on earth, attempting to snatch a wisp of the consciousness of God, then returning to create material things. We saw this as an inherent sin in the contract of the artist."