This is not your average rock memoir. Patti Smith lives a quiet life in rural Michigan with her cats and half-empty paper coffee cups. She reads a lot. She travels—Berlin, Tokyo, Reykjavik, London—but doesn’t trash hotel rooms. She drops names, but they are the names of her favorite authors and film directors. She watches The Killing and CSI: Miami on TV.
Smith’s previous memoir, Just Kids, won the National Book Award in 2010. Even longtime fans were surprised by the grace and fluidness of her prose. Built around her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, it was an adventure that stuck with the reader: two young artists—not quite lovers, more than friends—who built careers in New York City despite leading lives of whimsy.
Like that book, M Train is beautifully written, but it is less linear. It is a kind of collage of memories and impressions ranging from her childhood to the present day. We learn almost nothing about the New York proto-punk scene of the early ‘70s but a great deal about Roberto Bolaño and Haruki Murakami and about Smith’s family and her favorite coffee shop. We drift in and out of her dreams, always connecting back to the routines that enable some happiness.
Just as fans of Smith loved Just Kids for its hopeful tone, so they’ll appreciate M Train for the brave face it maintains in the face of death and melancholy. This is a more moving book than the earlier memoir, haunted by a spirit of loss. We read of the deaths of her beloved husband, Fred, and her brother, Todd, in short succession.
Smith’s earlier buoyant tone has been replaced with a gentle, reflective stoicism. The book’s diarylike structure gives us insight into Smith’s daily routine—her cycling, her Nescafé habit, her dreams, her reactions to what she’s reading (everything from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle). Her life is a model of how to age gracefully and sagaciously.
For many, finishing this book will be the beginning of the better understanding of an old friend—indeed, this is a book for fans, and is best when read with knowledge of her earlier works. M Train reminds us of why the punk pioneer of Horses shone in the first place: she is a smart, sensitive, observant, edgy, unpredictable genius. Reading her is like having a lucid dream, floating through New York City streets and Michigan country roads.
I wish I could dial up Patti Smith on a whim, or be her pen-pal. In the meantime, I’ll be re-reading M Train.