Legendary singer-songwriter Patti Smith will release the follow-up to her 2010 memoir Just Kids later this year.
M Train has been described as a “roadmap” through Smith’s life, with various turning points in her life featured in details. The memoir, which is due out October 6th, will also contain black-and-white Polaroids that the singer-songwriter took herself while on the road.
A press release about the book’s content has said: “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 exquisitely told memoir.”
The scruffy songwriter, poet and artist’s story is set to shift between reality and dreams, as Smith ponders various forms of creativity, 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 [Jean] Genet, [Sylvia] Plath, [Arthur] Rimbaud and [Yukio] Mishima.”
She also shares memories of her time married to MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, who died in 1994 – an event that greatly affected Patti’s life. “It is loss, as well as the consolation we might salvage from it, that lies at the heart of this exquisitely told memoir,” publisher Knopf included in its brief.
Just Kids was published in January 2010 and documented Smith’s relationship with late photograph Robert Mapplethorpe.
Cover photo (curtesy of Entertainment Weekly) below:
