Patti Smith M Train
Patti Smith has long been one of the most original women in rock music, riding onto the scene with her debut album, Horses, way back in 1975. Smith’s records have often included poetic pieces, and she has complemented these with several books of poetry and short stories. In recent years, Smith the musician has largely been eclipsed by Smith the writer of amazing memoirs. Having dazzled with Just Kids (2010) and M Train (2015), Patti Smith continued the sequence in 2019 with Year of the Monkey.
I read M Train a few months after it appeared. At the time, I found it a bit of a challenge, due to the narrative style. I returned to the book in 2021 – with the cream pages already yellowing around the edges, this was starting to feel like an old friend – and found it a much more enjoyable read. I think that, having increased my knowledge of Patti, and her artistic hinterland, during the intervening years, a lot more was now clear to me. Perhaps relatively recent reading of other non-linear memoirs, including those of Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan, may have shown me the light. Strangely I can also see parallels between Patti Smith’s fact and the fiction of Ali Smith – with shifting narrative, and dazzling wordplay.
M Train is a beautifully rambling, in the best sense of the word, snapshot of Patti’s activities – illustrated with the black and white Polaroid photos for which she is renowned. Ahead of publication, Patti spoke of the book being intended as “a roadmap to my life”. Whereas Just Kids focussed on Patti’s friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, told chronologically, M Train is a diverse, but equally enthralling, journey. Although there are not many dates in the book, references to Hurricane Sandy battering the New Jersey shoreline, where Patti has recently acquired a beach house, and the aftermath, place a large part of the narrative during 2012 and 2013.
Patti spends a lot of time in a New York coffee house, writing in notebooks. This in turn leads to tales of travels, both physical and intellectual. A recurring dream about a cowboy, who advises Patti, runs through the book. Possibly the cowboy symbolises the legacy of Fred Sonic Smith, her late husband. “It’s not so easy writing about nothing” is the opening sentence of the book, courtesy of the cowboy. He has a point, but Patti has the ability to turn mundane daily activity into the starting point for many a fascinating anecdote. Some of these chronicles are stimulated by meditation, while Patti enjoys drinking one more cup of coffee for the road. Events in the present merge with memories from the past, many of which focus on Patti’s life with Fred, including a trip to Surinam and French Guiana, in 1981, in celebration of their first wedding anniversary. There are fond recollections of the childhoods of Patti and Fred’s son and daughter, Jackson and Jesse, as the family live quietly in St Clair Shores, Michigan, until the idyll is shattered by the death of Fred, in 1994. Patti also offers memories of her own childhood, with love for parents and siblings.
M Train is possibly unique, as a memoir of a musician in which music is rarely mentioned, despite Patti releasing the Banga album during the relevant period. She has so much else to share with us. Patti’s travels stretch across the Americas, several parts of Europe, northern Africa, and Japan. Appreciation of art and literature spans a dazzling variety of themes, from the work of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), the Mexican painter, to Patti watching the detectives in British television dramas. Throughout the book, Patti is modest about her many artistic and cultural achievements, which often stem from imaginative collaborations. One of the revelations is Patti’s role in the Continental Drift Club, a (now defunct) society, honouring the work of Alfred Wegener (1880-1930). Wegener was a German scientist, and explorer, who played a major role in developing the theory of Continental Drift.
andrewgodsell 