As the years have gone by, I’ve really come to appreciate how Smith created herself based on her love of literature and art. The book describes the milieu she came from as a young artist, but as you point out in the review, she was always in an indirect relationship with it: that is, she wasn’t part of the Factory crowd really, and wasn’t a suitable candidate for it, and she was marginally thick with rockstars before she had begun to become one.

Her real trajectory as an artist came from her intense love of art and certain numinous artists: Blake, Rimbaud, Dylan. She’s the ultimate fan: Cut your hair like Keith Richards, go on pilgrimage in the footsteps of Rimbaud. But with the strange and not inevitable result that she produced work like “Birdland” and “Land” which is still untouchable: funny, and harrowing, and moving, even 35 years later.

Her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe seems to have been a major factor in her ability to create the path she created, and I thought this book was hands-down the best love story I’ve read in years. You know, Heathcliff and Catherine, that kind of love story. When I finished reading it, I felt like I’d been given a precious gift.