After reading a beautifully and simply written short personal essay by Patti Smith in the New Yorker, I had high expectations of this memoir. Describing her long romance and friendship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe, the book is well written and provides many intimate details of the lives of both figures. All the same, I found something lacking - while she writes honestly, there is not a lot of vulnerability to be found in this book. She describes herself as awkward and shy, but in recounting actual episodes from her life, she always seems to have had something clever and quirky to say, fascinating a good many of the famous people in whose orbits she moved. It's clear from the trajectory of her life that she possesses great charisma; it would have been interesting to hear her talk about this head-on. As it is, the story-telling seems at times disingenuous. The name-dropping - while defensible - becomes tedious. At other times, her prose is embarrassingly overwrought: "It was there I met Saint, my guide, a black Cherokee with one foot in the street and the other in the milky way. He suddenly appeared, as vagabonds will sometimes find one another." The actual story is poignant; I was sorry to find the writing less so.

A lovely memoir, beautifully written.

This book is thoroughly well-done and excellent in every respect. Patti Smith is an amazing human being

A beautiful and heartbreaking story of friendship. Smith is wholly genuine.

I hope this book will release her from the ghost of an early love. This guys continuos introspection was just an excuse not to make a decision. Of coarse a decision from this Robert would nullify his self importance, errrrr, angst. Robert's shellfishness appears to have haunted Patti for all these years. Too bad Robert didn't just become a priest. It would have saved Patti from his shallow personal struggles and may have allowed her to even more expand her artistry. Of coarse releasing this guy on unsuspected perisheners kids may have proved problematic. But at least he would have been the Pope's problem, not Patti's.............................................Patti is clearly the interesting character in the book. I wish she would have focused on other more important characters in her life. "Piss Factory" is artistry, a cross in a jar of piss is psychopathic. A girls struggle to leave her mundane existence is human. A boy who's struggle is the struggle for years is a boring viral illness ready to infect bleeding hearts, not art. I like Patti as an artist and found her latest book a good Summer read.

Disappointing writing (i.e., high school frosh-level prose) from one of the great rock lyricists...further, while Ms. Smith's relationship with Mapplethorpe was (and is) a central touchstone in her life, it's the other things she mentions in passing - her encounters with other game-changers of the era and, in fact, her own career - that would have made a more interesting book. Shocked that this won a National Book Award...Keith Richards' "Life" was way better written and considerably more engaging.

I picked up this book rather against my will -- a friend in my book club suggested it for next month. I didn't know much about Ms. Smith, but still -- I wasn't too sure about reading what might be another drug / alcohol infused hippy Factory-type reminiscence. Boy, was I surprised -- not about the time & place, but by her insights, particularly of her long term roommate & confident photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It is a terrifically interesting close up art /music scene, NYC, circa 1970. Ms. Smith got hooked on brooze or drugs, and presents a very clear and poetic picture -- of what it took to make it. Winner of a National Book Award.

Patti Smith is a brilliant writer! Wonderful moving memoir of artists living in New York in the 1960s and 70s. Excellent!

This book was incredible. Patti's imagery made me feel like I was right there with her in the Chelsea Hotel.

Poignant beginning and end, but a good portion of the middle I found less interesting and somewhat unfocused.