M Train is the third book I have read by Patti Smith, and I’m already looking forward to the next one. Patti Smith is an artist that I have perceived entirely different in every book. I can say that she became one of my indispensable ones with the M Train.
I read Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Woolgathering with great pleasure and sympathy that I cannot easily find in every book. While reading this book, similar but stronger feelings rushed to my heart from the very first pages. As the book progressed, I couldn’t help thinking how much I resembled Patti Smith. I’m sure most people who read her books feel the same. I guess because it brought out such pure and only so powerful feelings at once and invites the reader to look inside.
I finished the book in the evening, which I started reading in the afternoon. During the day, I could not let it down; I did not want to break away from the tranquillity that the book gave me. I also took many notes to examine later; the songs, books, authors, and venues in the book. I guess it wouldn’t be a lie if I said I devoted a whole day to it. It will be very nice to read all of her books over and over again in a few years. I am dreaming of all the good times I’m going to have already.
Patti Smith is an author who seduces the readers. This book held me such a beautiful mirror that I smiled throughout reading it. I started seeing everything in my life more clearly; I was thankful for all of them. What more can I expect from a book? I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.
M Train
M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich 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, and across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations, we travel to Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico; to a meeting of an Arctic explorer’s society in Berlin; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York’s Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; 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 artists at work today.
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee Smith is an American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and poet who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses. Called the “punk poet laureate,” Smith fused rock and poetry in her work.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
