Description

A deeply moving and brilliantly idiosyncratic visual book of days by the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train. More than 365 images chart Smith’s singular aesthetic – inspired by her wildly popular Instagram

In 2018, without any plan or agenda for what might happen next, Patti Smith posted her first Instagram photo: her hand with the simple message “Hello Everybody!” Known for shooting with her beloved Land Camera 250, Smith started posting images from her phone including portraits of her kids, her radiator, her boots, and her Abyssinian cat, Cairo. Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith’s world, photographs of her daily coffee, the books she’s reading, the graves of beloved heroes – William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Simone Weil, Albert Camus. Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smith’s unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions, and whims. Original to this book are vintage photographs: anniversary pearls, a mother’s keychain, and a husband’s Mosrite guitar. Here, too, are never-before-seen photos of life on and off the road, train stations, obscure cafes, a notebook always nearby. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world.

With 365 photographs, taking you through a single year, A Book of Days is a new way to experience the expansive mind of the visionary poet, writer, and performer. Hopeful, elegiac, playful – and complete with an introduction by Smith that explores her documentary process – A Book of Days is a timeless offering for deeply uncertain times, an inspirational map of an artist’s life.

Publisher Review

PRAISE FOR PATTI SMITH: Some rock stars shut themselves away from life, but Smith's engagement with the world only deepens * Daily Telegraph * Tender, harrowing, often hilarious * Vogue * So honest and pure as to count as a true rapture -- Joan Didion Our St John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion -- Edmund White Profoundly beautiful, poetic in its prose and metaphysical in its meaning ... A stunning read * Financial Times * The narrating voice is the voice of Smith's music, twisting between the incantations of a priestess and laconic poetry ... There is plenty of wonderful in this small, sly, mystic book * Spectator * A poetic masterpiece -- Johnny Depp Terrifically evocative ... The most spellbinding and diverting portrait of funky-but-chic New York in the late '60s and '70s that any alumnus has committed to print * New York Times * Sharp, elegiac and finely crafted * Sunday Times *