A book of days

Review by Booklist Review

"I write and take pictures every day," Smith tells us, and, indeed, her photographs appear in her memoirs, most recently The Year of the Monkey (2019). This dual practice brought her to Instagram and now blossoms in this art volume marking each of the 366 days in a leap year with a photograph and caption. Noting births, deaths, and anniversaries, Smith poignantly mixes pictures from her Chicago childhood, early New York years, family life with Fred "Sonic" Smith, and various pilgrimages with new images, some chronicling the pandemic. Detecting the sacred everywhere she looks, Smith photographs her "desk talismans" and personal shrines to such guiding lights as Arthur Rimbaud, Sam Shepard, William Burroughs, Greta Thunberg, and Haruki Murakami. So extensive are her tributes, she provides "Suggested Readings." Her images of coffee cups and gravestones, beaches and gardens are intimate and poetic; her captions are tender, imaginative, funny, and elegiac. Laced with gratitude and wonder, this is a transporting and affecting tour of Smith's influences and aesthetics, an evocative celebration of her devotion to creativity and "the blessed task of remembrance."

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Rock star Smith (Year of the Monkey) unfurls a vibrant photo scrapbook created during the Covid-19 pandemic and inspired by the "exploding collage" of social media culture. The photos include selections from Smith's personal archive, as well as cellphone snapshots and Polaroids. There is one photo for each day of the year, and the short accompanying text often references cultural figures, whether William S. Burroughs or Greta Thunberg. Smith also recounts moments from her own life, including riding her first bike as a child and outtakes from her 1970s punk heyday. Recurring figures include her late partner, Robert Mapplethorpe, and her daughter, Jesse, who encouraged Smith to join Instagram. The captions often take the form of straightforward descriptions ("The desk of the great writer Jorge Luis Borges lives in the National Library in Buenos Aires"), but Smith's personal photos provide moments for deeper introspection ("This is my thinking chair. I sit and let it take me where it will, as if it were a small wooden ship"). Below a photo of One World Trade Center, Smith writes, "A city of burning days and consecrated nights, utterly transformed from the New York I once knew." Wrapped in a nostalgic glow, this will be an inspiration for Smith's fans. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson, & Lerner. (Nov.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Smith returns with a photo-heavy book of days, celebrating births, deaths, and the quotidian, all anchored by her distinctive style. In 2018, the musician and National Book Award--winning author began posting on Instagram, and the account quickly took off. Inspired by the captioned photo format, this book provides an image for every day of the year and descriptions that are by turns intimate, humorous, and insightful, and each bit of text adds human depth to the image. Smith, who writes and takes pictures every day, is clearly comfortable with the social media platform--which "has served as a way to share old and new discoveries, celebrate birthdays, remember the departed, and salute our youth"--and the material translates well to the page. The book, which is both visually impactful and lyrically moving, uses Instagram as a point of departure, but it goes well beyond to plumb Smith's extensive archives. The deeply personal collection of photos includes old Polaroid images, recent cellphone snapshots, and much-thumbed film prints, spanning across decades to bring readers from the counterculture movement of the 1960s to the present. Many pages are taken up with the graves and birthdays of writers and artists, many of whom the author knew personally. We also meet her cat, "Cairo, my Abyssinian. A sweet little thing the color of the pyramids, with a loyal and peaceful disposition." Part calendar, part memoir, and part cultural record, the book serves as a rich exploration of the author's fascinating mind. "Offered in gratitude, as a place to be heartened, even in the basest of times," it reminds us that "each day is precious, for we are yet breathing, moved by the way light falls on a high branch, or a morning worktable, or the sculpted headstone of a beloved poet." A powerful melding of image and text inspired by Instagram yet original in its execution. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Hello Everybody On March 20, 2018, the Spring Equinox, I posted my first Instagram entry. My daughter, Jesse, had suggested that I open an Instagram account to distinguish mine from fraudulent ones soliciting in my name. Jesse also felt the platform would suit me, as I write and take pictures every day. She and I created the site together. I wondered how I might signal to the people that it was truly me reaching out to them. I decided upon a straightforward approach: thisispattismith. I used my own hand as the image for my first venture into the virtual world. The hand is one of the oldest of icons, a direct correspondence between imagination and execution. Healing energy is channeled through our hands. We extend a hand in greeting and service; we raise a hand as a pledge. Ocher handprints, thousands of years old, found stenciled in the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc Cave in southeastern France, were formed by spitting red pigment over a hand pressed against the stone wall to merge with an element of strength or perhaps to signal a prehistoric declaration of self. Instagram has served as a way to share old and new discoveries, celebrate birthdays, remember the departed, and salute our youth. I write my captions in a notebook or directly on the phone. I would have liked to have had a Polaroid-based site, but as the film has been discontinued, my camera is now a retired witness of former travels. The images in this book are drawn from existing Polaroids, my archive, and the cellphone. A process unique to the twentyfirst century. Although I miss my camera and the specific atmosphere of the Polaroid image, I appreciate the flexibility of the cellphone. My first inkling of a cellphone's possible artistic usefulness was through Annie Leibovitz. In 2004 she took an interior shot with her cell, and then printed it out as a small, low-resolution image. She said offhandedly that she thought it would one day be possible to take worthy pictures with a phone. I didn't consider having a cellphone back then, but we evolve with the times. Mine, acquired in 2010, has enabled me to unite with the exploding collage of our culture. A Book of Days is a glimpse of how I navigate this culture in my own way. It was inspired by my Instagram but is uniquely its own. Much of it I created during the pandemic, in my room alone, projecting into the future and reflecting the past, family, and a consistent personal aesthetic. Entries and images are keys to unlocking one's own thoughts. Each is surrounded with the reverberation of other possibilities. Birthdays acknowledged are prompts for others, including your own. A Paris café is all cafés, just as a gravesite may echo others mourned and remembered. Having experienced much loss, I've found solace in frequenting the cemeteries of people I love, and I have visited many, offering my prayers, respect, and gratitude. I am at home with history and tracing the steps of those whose work has inspired me; many entries are that of remembrance. I have been encouraged in watching my site grow, from the first follower, my daughter, to over one million. This book, a year and a day (for those born on leap day), is offered in gratitude, as a place to be heartened, even in the basest of times. Each day is precious, for we are yet breathing, moved by the way light falls on a high branch, or a morning worktable, or the sculpted headstone of a beloved poet. Social media, in its twisting of democracy, sometimes courts cruelty, reactionary commentary, misinformation, and nationalism, but it can also serve us. It's in our hands. The hand that composes a message, smooths a child's hair, pulls back the arrow and lets it fly. Here are my arrows aiming for the common heart of things. Each attached with a few words, scrappy oracles. Three hundred and sixty-six ways of saying hello. Excerpted from A Book of Days by Patti Smith All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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