There's a new memoir out by Patti Smith called "Just Kids." The primary theme is her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, from their meeting in the late 1960s until his death in 1989.

Bonnie brought it home and I've been kind of reading it "over her shoulder" as it were.

From what I've read, the writing seems to me a bit stilted. It deals in good part with the inner feelings of Patti Smith in response to people and events. Some of her feelings, as she recounts them in retrospect, appear overly romanticized. She views herself, and wishes to be understood, as the child of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Perhaps someting of a "bright teenager" wish? Anyway, that's the book she chose to write. Who am I to naysay?

But I noticed one passage where she recounts a visit she and Mapplethorpe had paid to one of Charles Henri Ford's literary soirees at his Dakota apartment. In reviewing it she comments that Charles seemed better suited to the old days in Paris. He had been a member of the Gertrude Stein set and knew many key artistic and literary folk of the era.

That was funny because Bonnie and I were invited to tea by Charles, some 20 years later. The tea and cake was graciously served by his Nepalese butler Indra. After leaving we discussed how Charles seemed better suited to the old days in Paris. An almost word-for-word repetition of Patti Smith's comment.

I suppose it was fairly obvious and many people may have commented on it before and after us or Patti Smith and Mapplethorpe!