Just Kids by Patti Smith Non-Fiction Reading Response

The title of the book “Just Kids” has great significance to the book because its the theme that carries the story. The main characters, Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe are literally just kids when we meet them. Even at the end of the story, even when they grow older, even after Robert has died, they remain kids at heart.

The story opens with the central character, Patti, describing her early childhood in the South of New Jersey. In her own words she was, “dreamy,” “precocious,” and deemed “impractical” by her elementary school teachers. Less then ten years later, dissatisfied with the grown - up world of south Jersey she sets her sights on New York. In New York she imagines she could be her real self. To Patti that meant staying just a precocious kid. 

Using the excuse, “just kids” Patti and her new best friend Robert think they can get away with anything. Like on page 152 when Patti tells Robert she’s just peed in a take - out cup instead of a toilet and thinks that’s normal. Patty is a poet/musician and Robert is a photographer. Together they spend almost ten years “playing” in the New York art scene in the mid 1970’s.

Over the time that we get to know them the pair almost always do the opposite of what a grown - up would do. Patti and Robert both have equally strong imaginations and they see eye to eye on almost everything. They don’t live on very much money, but they feel rich. They live in a very tiny apartment, but they don’t care. Don’t get me wrong Robert turns into a super famous artist and Patti becomes a musical goddess, a mother, a widow, and the soul survivor of the story. Through all of that she stays just a kid. And looking at Robert on his deathbed describes him in his last moment as, “a sleepy youth cloaked in light.”