Tucked away in the backwater of New York City’s West Village was a cafe called ‘ino. The Bedford Street spot was quintessential New York circa 1855, where you’d expect someone like Walt Whitman seated at one of their hardwood tables chomping on the end of a primitive pen. Instead there was Patti Smith, rock legend and not-so-clandestine poet, who sat at only "Table One" with a cup of black coffee permanently flanking her notebook. ‘Ino’s brunch crowd was unbearable, but the weekday patrons (all three of them at a time) carried milder demeanors. Smith was something of an urban legend to those of us who only frequented ‘Ino semi-occasionally. If you were lucky enough, you caught her there at her table. If she wasn’t there, you had the privilege of actually sitting at that table (and in my case, rubbing it like the Apollo log) and shoveling down a meal in enough time before she got there or else you’d find her waiting in the bathroom until you left. When ‘Ino closed its doors for the last time in 2013, the owner gifted Patti with her now infamous table. The cover of Patti Smith’s latest M Train is a photo of her seated at it.
The prose of M Train floats, and is omnidirectional and impressionistic, like her previous memoir Just Kids. However, in this one Smith presents a deeper delving into her psyche, as she continuously tackles the notion of how to write about nothing. And in doing so, finds there’s definitely something. With M Train, Patti Smith paints solitude as beguiling and essential.
M Train doesn’t glorify sadness or loneliness, nor does it suggest that Patti Smith walks this present-day Earth through a tunnel of malaise. Rather, Smith travels around the world, finding solace in specific cafes in every city. She’s taking notes at every turn, and while her notebook seems to be her only partner on this mission, rarely does she discuss actually getting to write in it. Just Kids had photographer Robert Mapplethorpe as a focal point; M Train references Smith’s late husband Fred "Sonic" Smith in Polaroids, including one where they were forced out of a cab in French Guiana and escorted by the police, following an inspection of the cabbie’s trunk. Other moments include Smith meeting Bobby Fischer in secrecy in Iceland, where they weren’t allowed to speak about chess (instead they sang songs together), visiting the gravesites and homes of artists like Frida Kahlo and Sylvia Plath, and surviving Hurricane Sandy. She keeps her own company, and her pleasant acceptance of isolation manifests itself the most in her celebrating the holidays alone, though her sense of humor remains intact: one New Year’s Eve when a drunk passerby asks her what time it is and she replies "time to puke."
M Train is most remarkably in sync with Smith’s musical catalog, as it’s packed with thoughtful prose and keen observations. Smith has always been a poet first and foremost—before she was ever a performer. Here, Smith has created a book that so many of us wish to write, one that parses what it all means. Nearing seventy, Smith doesn’t sound like she has it all figured out, but she does have a collection of stories that serve as markers in her journey as an artist, in her solitude.