Events › Adult Book Discussion: M Train by Patti Smith

Join us for a lively book discussion of M Train by Patti Smith.
From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as "a roadmap to my life."

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, and across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations, we travel to Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico; to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; 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.

About the author: Patti Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 30, 1946. She is a singer-songwriter, writer and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary emergence of poetry and rock. Her album Horses has been hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time. She has recorded twelve albums. In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

She has written several books including Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, Auguries of Innocence,
M Train, and Just Kids, which won the Nonfiction category of the National Book Award in 2010.

Her drawings, photographs, and installations have been shown at numerous venues including the Andy Warhol Museum and the Fondation Cartier Pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris. In 2005, she was awarded the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, which is the highest honor awarded to an artist by the French Republic. (Bowker Author Biography).

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