M Train by Patti Smith
A review of Patti Smith’s M Train.
M Train by Patti Smith (2015). Published by Knopf.
This was my third Patti Smith memoir. The first was her classic Just Kids, in which she recalls her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, and I don’t think anything could ever top the magic that Just Kids created. That and Crying in H Mart are my favorite memoirs, hands down.
I then read Devotion, which was a strange hybrid of memoir and fiction that I just didn’t understand. I have a review on that one, find it here. But, like so many books I’ve reviewed on this blog, I stumbled upon this while wandering the biography section in my library.
While I was tempted to reach for the illustrated version of Just Kids, I grabbed the one book I actually hadn’t read yet, which was M Train.
Named after a train line on the New York City subway, we follow Smith’s adventures going to cafes, being a writer, and some side trips away from the city along the way. We get some lush backgrounds as she travels, which I very much enjoyed, and we get that classic Patti Smith prose that’s just music to our ears.
With that being said, let’s jump straight into the review!
Book Blurb
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, we travel to Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico; to the fertile moon terrain of Iceland; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; to the West 4th Street subway station, filled with the sounds of the Velvet Underground after the death of Lou Reed; 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.
Content
At times, this can be a very mundane memoir. If you’re into action and drama, this isn’t the memoir for you. The most excitement you get is when she travels to different countries, like Iceland and Mexico.
There’s a lot of little quiet moments in this book, lots of scenes of where Smith’s just in a cafe and thinking about art, writing, creativity. Something a lot of people tend to forget about Patti Smith is that she is actually a lot older, has had time to cultivate this voice that’s so musical and refined. She’s also lived and seen a lot, as she’s now 74 and still quite active, which shows in a memoir like this.
I love this memoir because Smith reminds me of me. She’s very minimalist, showing appreciation for everyday things that we tend to forget about during busy lives, and she truly just slows down. In New York, especially when I lived there, it was all about the grind and doing what was next. Smith was grounded, returning to the same coffeeshop, sitting back and enjoying her literary and artistic muses. It was so refreshing and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
After reading three of her memoirs now, listening for her music for years, and having dabbled a little bit in her poetry, I think that Smith is strongest when it comes to her prose, specifically in the memoir.
Devotion fell short to me because she dug too deep into the short story & that was disorienting as a reader, since she starts it as a memoir, but Just Kids and M Train do it well. You can tell she’s a poet because of her attention to detail within the prose itself, as well as the images that she scatters throughout the book.
This isn’t a linear memoir; but, really, none of Smith’s memoirs tend to be linear. She does this is a bouncing fashion, going from once experience to another, but it genuinely works. It doesn’t feel disjointed; everything serves a neat purpose and it is done properly. This is also very much a book about simplicity. Her voice is true, raw, vulnerable. And the story is only made even more true by the little things that makes Smith, well, Smith.
Overall Thoughts
I imagine this book is more for people who are fans of Patti Smith the writer and the creative, not the punk rocker, not the woman who was heavily involved with a major artist in 1970s New York City (Mapplethorpe). Just Kids has this more commercial appeal because it’s a good story that anyone can enjoy and learn from. It’s about the relationships and decisions that we make.
However, M Train is more about being a writer and a creative soul in different environments. It’s a meditation on what makes us tick as creatives, which isn’t really appealing to everyone. I’m a fan of Patti Smith as a writer and a singer, so this book I find quite good and fascinating.
If I was someone different, however, I don’t think I would’ve liked it as much.
