From Patti Smith’s latest memoir, tender snapshots of gratitude, spread across eight decades
It was a sharp U-turn from the mid to late 1970s, when Smith was on a fast track to becoming one of the most celebrated figures in alternative culture and rock ’n’ roll. She had been touring frequently, visited “hundreds of radio stations, or whatever my duties were, and I wasn’t writing much at all,” she told the Globe in an interview last month. At one point, she stopped keeping journals altogether.
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It was in that small room, with a floor cloaked in black felt and a lone window overlooking patches of lilac bushes, that Smith said she “reconnected with my earliest impulse, and that was to write.”
“I could really feel that I had earned, after a while, the right to call myself a writer,” she told the Globe. “I didn’t publish. I didn’t even try to publish. I was more concerned with developing my craft than publishing or trying to make a living doing it. It was actually, in that way, a very happy time. I felt proud of my efforts, and I felt that I was accomplishing something.”
Fourteen years of flexing her imagination behind closed doors served her well. Smith’s notoriety in the rock world is now rivaled only by her status as one of the most celebrated memoirists in American literature, largely thanks to her 2010 release “Just Kids,” a National Book Award winner. “Bread of Angels” is her first memoir since 2019’s travelogue “Year of the Monkey.”
In celebration of the release, Smith visits the Chevalier Theatre in Medford Dec. 17, with anecdotes from the book no doubt tucked in the pockets of her signature, androgynous black blazer.
Smith in 1976.
Frank Stefanko
Smith’s current book tour for “Bread of Angels” marks her second string of live appearances this fall. When Smith spoke with the Globe, she was in a Seattle hotel, traveling during the 50th anniversary tour for her debut album, “Horses.” On that Sunday afternoon, she said, she had already enjoyed a coffee from an artisan roaster, taken a stroll along the water, and perused a public market.
“When we’re traveling, [there’s] nothing really romantic about it,” she said. (Reader, as with anything Smith describes, it sounds incredibly romantic.)
The concurrence of the new memoir — released Nov. 4 — and her “Horses” anniversary tour was quite the juggling act. But Smith has always been a deft multitasker, as shown in “Bread of Angels,” which is her most layered memoir yet. The book compiles Smith’s “Proustian childhood,” riddled with tuberculosis and scarlet fever, her ascent to the “godmother of punk” in the 1970s, a private period with her husband and children, and a final chapter called “Vagabondia” that documents Smith’s more recent years (including a visit to Edgartown).
“I gave them, I think, all the information they deserve to read, and more,” Smith said. “I’m not here to satisfy the voraciously curious.”
The throughline of the book is gratitude for the loved ones who shaped the trajectory of the past nearly eight decades, a theme that comes through in the book’s title. Smith describes the concept of “bread of angels” as “unpremeditated gestures of kindness” from various people in her life, ranging from her parents and late husband, to fleeting figures, like a teenage crush she fondly recalls tying the laces of her skates before an ice rink date.
The idea for “Bread of Angels” came to Smith over a decade ago during a dream, in which she received the book — bound in a white cover and already written — in the mail. She awoke with her hands extended in front of her, as if holding it.
“It was such a strong dream, and it was so precise,” Smith said.
Smith with her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, in Detroit.Seiji Matsumoto
The process of assembling details from so many different periods of her life, however, was much more drawn out.
“First I just wrote outlines and thought about it,” Smith said. “It’s been 10 years.”
Motivated by a “sense of duty” to be accurate, she consulted her baby book and old journals for research, and reached out to her sister to verify details. As “Bread of Angels” gradually took shape, Smith published other well-received books, including memoirs “M Train” and “Year of the Monkey,” and her diary-like photography compilation, “A Book of Days.”
“When you’re writing nonfiction, the responsibility goes to every single person that’s in that book,” she said. “People don’t adhere to that at all writing nonfiction, especially these days. I’ve read so many made-up stories about myself.”
(How does she feel about those tall tales? “Well, it’s disrespectful to trees,” she said, referencing the waste of paper.)
One hurdle in the writing process came when Smith unearthed a surprise about her family tree. Two DNA tests, including one she took shortly before her 70th birthday, revealed that the father she grew up with was not her biological parent. Smith shelved the book for two years as she sat with the new information, but ultimately decided to honor her “real” father, Sidney, through “Bread of Angels.”
“I felt that to not speak of it is almost like a lie,” she said, “and to not speak of it would deny an opportunity to show gratitude to my biological father.”
Smith said she “found” the end of the book on a hotel balcony in Nice, France — the same location where she had started it years beforehand. “It was the word that first seduced me, and to the word I would return,” she writes in the book’s final pages, once again settling into her identity as a writer, as she did decades ago in that quaint, felt-lined room.
“There are aspects of the book that I think have my best writing so far,” Smith said. “Hopefully [in] the next one, I’ll have evolved even further.”
PATTI SMITH
At the Chevalier Theatre, 30 Forest St., Medford, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 7:30 p.m. Tickets available on the secondary market. chevaliertheatre.com
Victoria Wasylak can be reached at victoria.wasylak@globe.com. Follow her on Bluesky at VickiWasylak.bsky.social.
