'Year of the Monkey' by Patti Smith is a memoir that follows the author through the year 2016, starting on New Year's Eve. The book consists of entries from Smith's journals, musings on her experiences, and Polaroid photos. Throughout the year, Smith travels through various states, deals with the illness of close friends, and reflects on her own aging process. The writing style blends reality with dream sequences, providing intimate insights into Smith's thoughts and experiences.
The book captures Smith's journey through the year 2016, blending the real with the poetic and dreamlike elements. It delves into themes of life, death, aging, and personal reflections, all while incorporating references to pop culture, literature, and politics. Smith's writing style is described as lyrical, surreal, and poetic, offering a mix of stream of consciousness narrative and vivid imagery.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings include themes of illness, death, grief, and the emotional impact of loss.
From The Publisher:
Riveting, elegant, humorous-and illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids-New York Times bestseller Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.
"A picaresque voyage through Patti Smith's dreams and life, blending fiction and reality, conjured characters and actual ones"-The New York Times
Following a run of new year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, in which she debates intellectual grifters and spars with the likes of a postmodern Cheshire Cat. Then, in February 2016, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. For Smith-inveterately curious, always exploring, always writing-this becomes a year of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.
Taking us from California to the Arizona desert, from a Kentucky farm to the hospital room of a valued mentor, Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape in a haunting, poetic blend of fact and fiction. As a stranger tells her, "Anything is possible. After all, it's the Year of the Monkey." But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world.
Named one of NPR's Best Books of the Year-now including a new chapter, "Epilogue of an Epilogue," and ten new photos-Year of the Monkey "reminds us that despair and possibility often spring from the same source" (Los Angeles Times).
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About the Author:
PATTI SMITH is the author of Just Kids, which won the National Book Award in 2010, and of M Train, as well as numerous collections of poetry and essays. Her seminal album Horses has been hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time….
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