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M train / Patti Smith.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2015Copyright date: ©2015Edition: First editionDescription: 253 pages : illustrations ; 21 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 1101875100
  • 9781101875100
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Stations -- Café Ino -- Changing channels -- Animal crackers -- The flea draws blood -- Hill of beans -- Clock with no hands -- The well -- Wheel of fortune -- How I lost the wind-up bird -- Her name was Sandy -- Vecchia zimarra -- Mu -- Tempest air demons -- A dream of Alfred Wegener -- Road to Larache -- Covered ground -- How Linden kills the thing she loves -- Valley of the lost -- The hour of noon.
Summary: M Train is a journey through eighteen "stations." It 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. We then travel across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations: from Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico, to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin; from the ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith buys just before Hurricane Sandy hits, to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation, alongside signature memories including her life in Michigan with her husband, guitarist Fred Sonic Smith, whose untimely death was an irremediable loss. For it is loss, as well as the consolation we might salvage from it, that lies at the heart of this memoir, augmented by black-and-white Polaroids taken by Smith herself.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Dr. James Carlson Library Biography Smith, P. S656 Checked out 05/16/2024 33111008198372
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography Smith, P. S656 Available 33111008085942
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

National Best Seller

From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids : an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as "a roadmap to my life."

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 multiplatform artists at work today.

Stations -- Café Ino -- Changing channels -- Animal crackers -- The flea draws blood -- Hill of beans -- Clock with no hands -- The well -- Wheel of fortune -- How I lost the wind-up bird -- Her name was Sandy -- Vecchia zimarra -- Mu -- Tempest air demons -- A dream of Alfred Wegener -- Road to Larache -- Covered ground -- How Linden kills the thing she loves -- Valley of the lost -- The hour of noon.

M Train is a journey through eighteen "stations." It 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. We then travel across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations: from Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico, to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin; from the ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith buys just before Hurricane Sandy hits, to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation, alongside signature memories including her life in Michigan with her husband, guitarist Fred Sonic Smith, whose untimely death was an irremediable loss. For it is loss, as well as the consolation we might salvage from it, that lies at the heart of this memoir, augmented by black-and-white Polaroids taken by Smith herself.

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