Stop press: The release date and details of Patti Smith’s new memoir have just been confirmed. M Train, the sequel to her 2010 cult autobiography Just Kids will be yours to read and cry silent tears into from October 6.
M Train will focus on the second half of Smith’s life. Where Smith’s relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe formed the core of Just Kids (which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010), M Train will focus on the later decades of the singer’s life and the loss of her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith, guitarist in the legendary proto-punk band the MC5.
According to a description from the book’s publisher, Knopf: “M Train is a journey through eighteen ‘stations,'” beginning in the Greenwich Village cafe where Smith writes every morning, and moving, dreamlike, from Frida Kahlo’s house in Mexico City to Berlin, Far Rockaway, and the graves of Smith’s heroes — Jean Genet, Sylvia Plath, and of course her number one, Arthur Rimbaud. The book will also include black-and-white Polaroids taken by Smith herself.
In related news: Patti will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of her seminal album Horses on November 10 of this year, and staging performances in London, Paris and New York to commemorate the release.
Credits
Text Alice Newell-Hanson
Photography Claire Alexandra Hatfield
Jacket design Carol Devine Carson