Patti Smith, Part II

Bookworm

KCRW

Arts

4.5 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2010

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Just Kids (Ecco)

In the second of this two-part interview we hear about Patti Smith as a bookworm. You probably know about her love for Rimbaud, but did you know she worships the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov and his great novel, The Master and Margarita? A voracious reader, Smith has written three unpublished novels and has created hundreds of visual pieces. She speaks of her unbounded appetite for creativity.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.
0:07.1	You are a human animal.
0:11.3	You are a very special breed.
0:15.1	Or you are the only animal.
0:18.4	Who can think, who can reason, who can read.
0:22.4	From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt and welcome to Bookworm.
0:28.8	Today, Patty Smith returns for a second conversation about her memoir, Just Kids, recently
0:35.1	published by Echo Press.
0:37.1	The book is about her friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe when they were young artists living in Manhattan in the late 60s and early 70s.
0:45.9	Mapplethorpe died in 1989.
0:49.8	Patty, in Just Kids, you take the time, in fact, several times to say that you're not lesbian
0:57.3	and that you didn't do speed, although people identified with that with you from a role in an off-Broadway show
1:06.0	and from the speed of your discourse.
1:09.1	Why at this time would you want to re-fine the image?
1:18.5	Well, I don't say it apologetically, or to make a big statement, those times that I talk about
1:25.4	it, is in telling a tale, is telling a story.
1:30.6	Also, there's so much written about Robert and I that is just a preconception
1:36.6	or people's projection of who we were and who we are.
1:41.7	And it's just, I'm just, I mean, I really didn't, sorry if I'm being, I'm just trying to find
1:54.3	the right answer.
1:56.0	It's just right in the way it was, you know.
1:58.5	I thought it was a funny story in telling one of the,
	...

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