Sublimate

With a list of predominantly English and French-language writers, the godmother of punk is a highly informed reader.

Patti Smith possesses that strange form of intelligence in which, rather than the emotional and the intellectual eclipsing each other, they mutually enlighten each other. In this sense it could be argued that what Patti Smith did for punk, Charles Baudelaire did for poetry. However, Smith’s literary model is “Jo,” the headstrong artist of the family in L.M. Alcott’s Little Women, as her literary tastes are closer to adventures and explorers who get their own way than those of the poètes maudits.

Through her own books (such as her memoir Just Kids), Patti Smith has set out some preferences and authentic literary obsessions, with poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, and more recently two writers from South America, César Aira and Roberto Bolaño. Smith described Bolaño’s novel 2666 as the first masterpiece of the 21st century.

Reading lists (like this one from Borges) or what an artist has to say about themselves as a reader (like Virginia Woolf) are a curiosity and a channel of communication between their work and that which inspires their creation.

Here are some more literary recommendations from the great Patti Smith:

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