In this short book on this subject she doesn’t disappoint, helping us see the way she draws on experience—and particularly her experience of art and literature—to develop her own writing. These include poetry, theatre, essays, short stories, novellas and novels (the lengthier works are usually parceled out over several issues). By turns allegorical, metaphysical, fictional and factual, Devotion shows rather than tells what it means to give a life to writing.

While in Paris, Smith takes the occasion to visit the graves or homes of artists she sees as touchstones for her life and work: Albert Camus, Simone Weil, Patrick Modiano. I’m listening from time to time as I drive to Since I Fell by Dennis Lehane, which is not (in any way that is obvious to me) affecting me deeply.Camus's daughter invites her there, and Smith gets to stay in Camus's room, have lunch with Camus's daughter and spend time with Camus's granddaughter, take in the same views Camus took in, and even look at Camus's last manuscript, handwritten and complete with his crossouts and insertions. We travel through the South of France to Camus’s house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Patti Smith, a National Book Award–winning author, first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. Paris holds a welter of her associations, to French film, to French and expat literature, to younger versions of herself.

I loved her agony over picking the right books to take on a trip (I feel her so much there) and about visiting "holy" sites of authors that meant something to her. It’s not that great or even that compelling a story, one of lost innocence, but I like how it gives evidence to her theory; The figure skater, images from an Estonian film, Weil, Modiano, Camus, a visit to a French cemetery, they’re all here in her story. I really, really wanted to like this book, especially after she started out with talking about her time in Paris, especially with her editors and her book about to launch. In her late-life self discovery as a prose master, Patti Smith may have found yet another masterful voice.

I'm still hoping for another memoir of her time in Michigan raising a family, which I'm not sure will ever come, as I get the feeling she is private about some parts in her life. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. 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. Devotion is short enough to devour at one enjoyable sitting and thought-provoking enough to deserve re-reading.

Patti Smith, a National Book Award-winning author, first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession-a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. Patti read from the memoir section of Devotion (which involved a trip to France and all the meat, potatoes and coffee that made M Train so lovable) and spoke about how the rest of the slender volume was written in haste, against a deadline, as she was something at a loss as to how to describe the devotion of the process of writing in such a way. This Camus section unfortunately cast the Paris section of the book in a new light for me; Devotion now felt like a mediocre short story bookended by two vignettes about how awesome Patti Smith's life is. This stream of consciousness is remarkable in that the reader is offered a respite when the text deviates. Packed with enough passion and contagious energy to move readers to tune into their own inspirations and—whatever their medium—get to work.Tegemist on Martti Helde reekviemiga tuhandetele eestlastele, kes langesid massiküüditamise ohvriks ja lõpetasid Siberi kolhoosides kui Stalini sõdurid nad 1941. I'm not really sure what an Estonian ice skater having an affair with an older guy that she may or may not be happy about having has to do with devotion to craft, but I do see a lot of the author's more "personal" likes and dislikes in there. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. I think this would’ve been solved if I wasn’t under the notion that this would be a memoir, but it wasn’t completely one. average length of an LR paperback makes them especially convenient and manageable to read in my heritage language.