"I hated the soup and felt little for the can"

Shorty finally finished Freedom. He liked it, but it took him forever to read and I get the sense he had some over-identification issues, so despite the beautiful sentences about the Silver Palate cookbook and an evening of Zinfandel, he was glad when it was over.


Not so with Patti Smith's memoir of her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids, which unlike the Franzen's tome, was nominated for a National Book Award.

Smith touched me when I was a late teen and her musings seem ripped from my adolescent heart (the appropriate time & age for over-identification, it seems), and it's nice to see this carry over to my adulthood. Sentence for sentence, it's a tough call - but my money is on her. This one here is the fave so far.

"I didn't feel for Warhol the way Robert did. His work reflected a culture I wanted to avoid. I hated the soup and felt little for the can. I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it."

And yet, I do love those cows.