The book's beginning puts the reader in what will become a very familiar location - Cafe 'Ino in NYC. Although the reader spends some time with her in her Manhattan apartment, you feel as though her true home -the center of her world- is Cafe 'Ino. She is led there by a cowpoke who uses tough love to encourage her to "write about nothing". That cowpoke returns here and there, when the author is in need, like a guardian angel (guardian...cowpoke?). It's a dream, but you would be forgiven if you thought it was reality, because Smith then orders what is her quintessential meal at Cafe 'Ino - olive oil, brown bread, and coffee. In fact, coffee is a main theme throughout M Train. The author searches it out on all of her travels in faraway lands, makes Nescafe in her apartment, buys deli coffee to be drunk on her stoop, and of course consumes endless cups at Cafe 'Ino. To read this book without drinking coffee would almost be an insult to the caffeinated spirit of the work. Unthinkable.
The reader moves in and out and around the narrative, which is a lyrical, almost poetic, stream of consciousness. It's almost like you're reading one of Smith's beloved Moleskine notebooks, where she documents her minute observations and encapsulated moments. She uses those moments to wander back into the past, to explore how situations that occurred many years ago influence the current. In how M Train plays with space and time, it is really investigating the idea of "time" and showing that it may be an irrelevant construct. At different moments in your life, time can seem to move at different rates and be imbued with different meanings. Triggers can bring you back to a memory from the past, or propel you to imagining the future.
In the essay "Changing Channels", you follow Smith as she is encamped in her apartment, writing in bed amongst piles of books, pencils, notes, and other bits of a writing life. She shifts her thoughts toward the poet Roberto Bolano and a goal she set for herself - to write a 100-line poem to him and in his memory. After a few hours, she returns home and has a conversation with the TV remote control. She then leads you around the apartment and introduces some of her most treasured objects to you. Each one has a story - a pair of Margot Fonteyn's pointe shoes, a clay giraffe, photographs - but Smith focuses on the desk chair that belonged to her father. From this simple chair, you learn much about the author's father and her relationship to him. The chair symbolizes his warmth and comfort, his routines, and also his complicated nature. The essay then connects her father's chair to Robert Bolano's writing chair, which Smith visited on a previous trip to Spain. You can see how the narrative jumps and spins and floats around, both dreamlike and completely sober.
There are many reprints of Polaroid photos throughout M Train. If an object has special significance, there's a good chance you'll find a photo of it somewhere in the pages of the essay. In some of the pieces, she talks about the process of capturing the images - some only took one try and others took repeated and arduous efforts to get right. Others will never be seen because they were lost or stolen. There are photos of graves, deflated balloons, a taxidermy bear, and lots of fabrics. In fact, the photo that appears on the dust jacket is of Smith sitting at her favorite table at Cafe 'Ino.
If you are a fan of Patti Smith's work, M Train is a compelling addition. After reading it, you'll feel more connected to her as a creative spirit and as a human being. Her stream-of-consciousness style feels dreamlike and, at time, a bit manic but always observant and curious. You share meals with her, travels around NYC and the world, the heartbreak of Superstorm Sandy and its aftermath, and many many cups of coffee.
Librorum annis
