Patti Smith recently announced that she is planning a sequel to bestselling memoir Just Kids.
Smith won one of literature's most prestigious awards, the National Book Award, for the memoir in the Nonfiction category in 2010.
Just Kids chronicled the musician poet's tumultuous relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe. It contains lots of juicy tidbits and run-ins. Smith had dinner with Andy Warhol and chilled with Allen Ginsberg. She lived in the drug-addled world of the 60s and 70s. However, Smith seemed like she was trying to cram too much into one short book.
There seems like there's definitely more to Smith's story. In Just Kids, she was supremely focused on Mapplethorpe and not as much on herself. Smith feels the same, as she told Billboard "Just Kids was very focused on Robert and my relationship with Robert and wanting to be an artist, and the next book will be more, perhaps, music-based."
Smith also told Billboard, "I don't have a big rock 'n' roll lifestyle, a sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll story to tell. I think I have maybe a better story."
We are excited that she plans on perhaps leaving these aspects out of the new book. The parts of Just Kids where Patti Smith was more personal (talking about her childhood and early adolescence) were by far the most beautiful. We hope to see more of that kind of writing in her upcoming sequel.
Did you love Just Kids or hate it? Will you read the sequel? Let us know in the comments!