New book about Patti Smith and Mapplethorpe:
Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, like Jim Carroll and Andy Warhol, were tribally Catholic. (As of course was sufferin’ Jack Kerouac, the grandaddy of them all, with his sacramental visions of homo viator.) And after reading Just Kids, Smith’s memoir of the life she and Mapplethorpe shared in pursuit of their respective vocations, you’ll be aware that this is something more than a coincidence.
Arriving in Manhattan in the summer of 1967, penniless and refusing to take off her raincoat, Smith meets the young Robert Mapplethorpe, all charm. They bond over an eighteen-dollar Persian necklace: Smith compares it to a scapula, prompting Mapplethorpe to ask if she’s Catholic. “No,” replies Smith, “I just like Catholic things.” Mapplethorpe, an ex-altar boy, confides that he used to love swinging the censer. And so begin two decades of spiritual comradeship…
I would love Camille Paglia’s take on this.
