M Train

National Best Seller

From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the caf s 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 caf 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.

Author: Patti Smith
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 10/06/2015
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.93lbs
Size: 8.25h x 5.69w x 0.88d
ISBN: 9781101875100


Award: ALA Notable Books - Winner
Award: Michigan Notable Books - Winner


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 05/01/2015 pg. 52
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2015
Publishers Weekly 08/10/2015
Entertainment Weekly 08/14/2015 pg. 66
Library Journal 09/01/2015 pg. 113
Booklist 09/01/2015 pg. 25
Entertainment Weekly 10/09/2015 pg. 62
New York Review of Books 10/22/2015 pg. 4
Shelf Awareness 10/06/2015
BookPage 10/01/2015
New York Times Book Review 12/06/2015 pg. 29
New York Times Book Review 12/13/2015 pg. 42
Booklist Editors Choice/Adult 01/01/2016 pg. 6
Library Journal 05/01/2015

About the Author
PATTI SMITH is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released twelve albums, including Horses, which has been hailed as one of the top one hundred albums of all time by Rolling Stone.

Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her books include Just Kids, winner of the National Book Award in 2010, Wītt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Auguries of Innocence.

In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor given to an artist by the French Republic. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

Smith married the musician Fred Sonic Smith in Detroit in 1980. They had a son, Jackson, and a daughter, Jesse. Smith resides in New York City.