by Catherine Lacey (author) & Forsyth Harmon (illustrator)Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (January 3, 2017)
Hardcover, 96 pages.
“Patti
Smith and Robert Maplethorpe lived together in Brooklyn and later the Chelsea
Hotel while the two were in their twenties. Robert told his conservative
parents he had married Patti in a strawberry field in California so they would
accept the living situation. In her memoir, Just
Kids, Patti calls him the ‘artist of my life’ and after they parted ways as
lovers, they still made art together. Robert took the cover portrait for her
breakout album, Horses. When the pair
met Andy Warhol he dismissed them as ‘horrible’ and ‘dirty’ Robert looked up to
Andy, but Patti didn’t see the appeal. ‘I felt little for the can and didn’t
like the soup,’ she said.”
The
copy I have of this book is an advanced reading copy, a softcover one, so the
material I read might be slightly different from the final version. I was given
it as a Christmas present from an old friend of mine. She isn’t connected to
the literary world, so I have no idea how she got her hands on it. She claims
it was bought at a gift store (a cheap one), but I have my doubts.
Wherever
the copy I have in my hands came from, this is a fun and expertly researched
volume. It’s amazing how the sexual lives of various artists (of all stripes)
collide together to create this web of debauchery. From the secret homosexual
love of James Baldwin, to the constant adulteries of Ernest Hemingway, to the
tempestuous drug fueled love life of Billy Holiday, to the long lasting (but
forbidden love) between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The six degrees of
separation law never seemed to small after reading this book.
A
fun easy read. It also gave me several suggestions for further readings in the
autobiographies of the various artists mentioned.
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