Ms. Hen reviews M Train

Ms. Hen at her favorite local cafe, Jitters

M Train

Patti Smith

Vintage Books

2015, 2016

Ms. Hen decided to read this book because her hen-sister lent it to her, and Ms. Hen has always been curious about Patti Smith. She is not a fan of her music, but she understands a mystique surrounds Smith that not many public figures possess. She was one of the first women in punk rock, which Ms. Hen admires.

M Train is a memoir about different places Smith has been and her obsession with coffee and cafes. Ms. Hen can relate to this because she is also obsessed with coffee. She can’t go a day and not have at least two cups.

This book is also about loss: the loss of things, and the loss of people. Smith tends to lose things. When Ms. Hen read that Smith lost some beautiful pictures that Smith took of Sylvia Plath’s grave, it pained her. She could imagine such a thing happening and how devastating it would be to a person who was an admirer. Ms. Hen is also a Plath fan, so she can relate.

Ms. Hen liked reading about the different places Smith traveled to, and the adventures she experienced. She went to Mexico to speak at Frida Kahlo’s house; she flew to Japan to see where the tsunami hit, she also went to Tangiers to speak and play at a Beat festival. Smith’s journeys have a purpose, and they seem to be a part of her; they are necessary. She buys a house right before Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast, and the area in which it was located was devastated, and she had to have extensive renovations done. This book is also about trying to find a home.

There are some mentions of chickens in this book, which Ms. Hen enjoyed. One particular passage is, “He drove a beat-up tan Peugeot and insisted our bags stay with him in the front seat as chickens were normally transported in the trunk.” This is important because it was a lie. There was a man in the trunk and the people in the car were arrested for that, including Patti and her husband, Fred, even though they didn’t know. Ms. Hen doesn’t like when people lie about chickens, especially when people get in trouble.

When Ms. Hen first started reading this memoir, she wasn’t into it. The narrative follows Smith around her messy apartment with her cats to the café near her place and scribbling in a notebook and also on napkins. Ms. Hen thought that Smith might have had too much time on her hands, but after she got into the book, Ms. Hen decided that Smith is an obsessive artist and sees the world in a different way than other people. Ms. Hen wishes she had a lot of time on her hands, so she could wander the streets and write in notebooks and be strange. Ms. Hen used to be stranger than she is now, but these days she has to pretend she’s a normal person. It’s difficult for her, but she is capable of doing it.

This book is about dreams and has a lot of air and wispiness to it. Ms. Hen took pleasure reading this book, and she thinks it’s the right book to read at the end of the year: it’s quiet and peaceful, sad, but hopeful. It’s about some of one person’s life, and how she views things and feels, and meanders around the world.

Caffe Trieste, San Francisco