Books I Read in 2021, Part 3
by kipress
Just Kids and M Train by Patti Smith
After having it on my list for years, I finally got to Patti Smith’s memoir about her long friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. One of the most striking things about the story is the confluence: both Smith and Mapplethorpe became iconic cultural figures of their generation, but just happened to meet well before they were famous when he was buying something at the bookstore where she worked. They eventually make the desperate decision to “apply” to become residents at the Chelsea Hotel, and, having succeeded, end up at a cultural crossroads, a time and place where famous figures fly through the story and cross paths with Smith’s and Mapplethorpe’s respective developing talents.
I enjoyed this book so much I moved on to Smith’s later memoir M Train, a much less straightforward, more meditative and wandering book that’s an oblique, belated response to the death of her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith. M Train is much harder to describe—but I think I liked it even better, because that’s the kind of reader I am.
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
I finally got to this little book, and it lives up to its reputation. Lewis struggles with his faith while grappling with the loss of his wife to cancer. They didn’t have long together, and the intensity of his questioning and his suffering make it seems like the brevity of the relationship focused his emotions, then put them through the wringer of a Christian scholar’s brain.
Voices from Chernobyl: An Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich
This book! I’ve been recommending it to everyone, and it was for sure the highlight of my reading year. Alexievich is a well-known, Nobel-winning Belarusian journalist; this is probably her best-known book. I hadn’t read any of her work but had filed away my desire to do so back when she took the Nobel. The book is almost 100% pure interview transcript. Working about a decade after Chernobyl, Alexievich interviewed those who refused to leave, those who were sent to clean up, and those who returned; activists, teachers, scientists, engineers, army conscripts, bureaucrats, exiles, and the families of the dead. Among the pure grief—and there is a lot of that—sit anger, frustration, resignation, denial, desperation, accusation, and truly impressive amounts of vodka—universal cure and universal currency.
On to 2022’s books! I’m already, way, way behind. I made the mistake of buying some temporary streaming subscriptions for a Christmas treat, so I’ve been watching too much TV. They just ran out, though, so I can get back to reading now–assuming I can keep off the doomscrolling.
The Press Gallery 