Patti Smith turned seventy in 2016. That was the Year of the Monkey. Most people celebrate a milestone like that with a party or maybe a retrospective, but Smith isn't most people. She hit the road. She went to San Francisco, stayed at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz, and wandered through the surreal landscape of a changing America. It was a weird time. David Bowie had just died. Sam Shepard, her long-time friend and one-time lover, was fading away from ALS. The political climate in the United States was shifting into something unrecognizable and harsh.
Honestly, if you've ever felt like the world was tilting off its axis, Patti Smith Year of the Monkey is the book that finally puts those feelings into words. It isn't a traditional memoir. It’s a fever dream. It’s a travelogue where the signs on the road talk back to you. Smith captures that specific, haunting feeling of being "between things."
The Surreal Reality of 2016
The book kicks off right after a run of shows at the Fillmore. Smith is alone. She’s drifting. This isn't the punk rock chaos of the 1970s or the gritty New York City streets of Just Kids. This is a quieter, more internal kind of haunting.
She checks into the Dream Inn. She talks to a sign named Ernest. Yeah, a literal candy wrapper/sign. If that sounds crazy, you’ve clearly never spent too much time alone in a hotel room after a long shift. Smith has this incredible ability to make the inanimate feel sentient. She doesn't just see a wrapper on the floor; she sees a narrative. This is how she survives. She turns the mundane into the mythic.
While she’s wandering the West Coast, the reality of Sam Shepard’s illness looms over everything. He’s in Kentucky, trying to finish his final book, Spy of the First Person. Smith travels there to help him. Their relationship is the beating heart of this narrative. It’s tender. It’s devastating. They’re two old souls who have known each other since they were kids in the Chelsea Hotel, now facing the ultimate exit. There’s a scene where they’re just sitting together, and the silence says more than any dialogue could.
Why the "Year of the Monkey" Matters
In the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of the Monkey is associated with unpredictability. It's a time of tricksters and fast changes. 2016 lived up to that. For Smith, it wasn't just about the calendar; it was about the atmosphere.
- The loss of Sandy Pearlman.
- The looming shadow of the 2016 election.
- The literal physical exhaustion of a life spent on stage.
She writes about "the silver lining of the apocalypse." It’s a grimly beautiful way to describe the state of the world. She doesn't preach. She doesn't give you a political manifesto. She just shows you the trash on the beach and the way the light hits the waves, and somehow, you understand exactly how she feels about the state of the union.
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Dreaming While Awake
One of the most polarizing things about Patti Smith Year of the Monkey is the way it slips in and out of dreams. You'll be reading about her getting a cup of coffee—she drinks a lot of black coffee, by the way—and suddenly she’s in a surreal landscape with characters that might be real or might be ghosts.
It’s a bit like a Haruki Murakami novel, but with more Polaroids.
Smith has always used her Polaroid camera as a way to "catch" reality. The book is peppered with these grainy, atmospheric shots. They act as anchors. When the prose gets too ethereal, the photo of a rumpled bed or a pair of boots pulls you back to Earth. It's a clever trick. It makes the reader feel like a co-conspirator in her subconscious.
A lot of critics tried to categorize this as "magical realism." Kinda. But it feels more like "heightened observation." When you’re grieving, the world doesn't look normal. Colors are too bright. Strange coincidences feel like omens. Smith is just brave enough to write that down without worrying if she sounds "sensible."
The Kentucky Sessions
The sections of the book set in Kentucky are the most grounded. They provide the necessary friction to the dreamlike sequences in California and Arizona. Helping Sam Shepard finish his book was a labor of love. It was also a confrontation with mortality.
Shepard couldn't type anymore. He could barely speak at times. Smith sat with him, transcribing, editing, and just being. It’s a masterclass in how to show up for someone. Most celebrity memoirs are about who you met at a party. This is about who you sat with in the dark when the party was over decades ago.
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Lost in the American Landscape
Smith travels to the Southern Cross ranch. She visits the Salton Sea. If you’ve never been to the Salton Sea, imagine a post-apocalyptic beach where the sand is actually ground-up fish bones and the air smells like salt and decay. It’s a perfect setting for a book about the end of an era.
She captures the weirdness of roadside America. The diners that time forgot. The strange motels with flickering neon signs. She’s looking for something—maybe meaning, maybe just a good cup of coffee—and she finds it in the most random places.
"Everything is localized," she writes. "All things move toward the center."
This sense of wandering is central to the American mythos, from Kerouac to Steinbeck. Smith fits right into that lineage, but she brings a specifically feminine, aging, and artistic perspective that we don't usually see. She isn't a young man looking for adventure; she’s an established artist looking for a way to keep her soul intact in a world that feels increasingly hollow.
The Impact of Loss
By the end of the year, Sam Shepard is gone. Sandy Pearlman is gone. The world has changed.
The book ends not with a resolution, but with a continuation. She’s still walking. She’s still taking photos. She’s still dreaming. The Year of the Monkey ends, and the Year of the Rooster begins. Life keeps moving, whether we’re ready for it or not.
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People often ask if you need to be a die-hard Patti Smith fan to enjoy this book. Honestly? No. If you're a fan of Horses or Just Kids, you’ll love the Easter eggs and the familiar voice. But even if you don't know a thing about the New York punk scene, the book works as a meditation on aging and the passage of time. It’s about how we process the "unraveling" of our lives.
How to Read Patti Smith Year of the Monkey
If you're going to dive into this, don't try to read it like a standard biography. You'll get frustrated. You'll wonder why she's talking to a sign or why the timeline seems to jump around.
- Read it slowly. The prose is dense and poetic.
- Look at the photos. Don't just skip past them. They are part of the narrative.
- Embrace the confusion. It’s okay if you don't know what's a dream and what’s real. That’s the point.
- Listen to her music while you read. Put on M Train or Banga. It sets the mood.
Practical Takeaways from Smith’s Journey
While it’s a literary work, there are some pretty "real world" lessons tucked into the pages of Patti Smith Year of the Monkey.
- The Power of Solitude: Smith shows that being alone doesn't have to mean being lonely. It can be a fertile ground for creativity.
- Creative Resilience: Even in the face of immense grief, she keeps producing. Art isn't just a career for her; it’s a survival mechanism.
- The Value of Observation: By paying attention to the small things—a discarded wrapper, a specific shade of blue—we can find beauty in a chaotic world.
The book is a reminder that we are all just travelers. We’re all moving through our own "Year of the Monkey," trying to make sense of the shifts in the wind. Smith just happens to be the one who wrote it all down in a way that makes the chaos feel like art.
Actionable Next Steps
If the themes of memory, travel, and the intersection of dreams and reality in Smith's work resonate with you, here is how to engage further:
- Visit the Dream Inn: If you find yourself in Santa Cruz, visit the actual locations Smith mentions. Seeing the Pacific through her "lens" changes the way you view the California coast.
- Start a "Year of" Journal: Smith’s work is built on her notebooks. Start documenting your own year, focusing not just on events, but on the strange dreams and coincidences that happen along the way. Use a physical notebook; there's something about the tactile nature of it that Smith would approve of.
- Explore Sam Shepard’s Final Work: To get the full picture of their relationship during this period, read Spy of the First Person. It’s the companion piece to the Kentucky chapters in Smith’s book and provides the other side of that heartbreakingly beautiful silence.
- Practice Analog Photography: Grab a film camera or a vintage-style instant camera. Try to capture the "feeling" of a place rather than a perfect, filtered Instagram shot. Look for the shadows and the imperfections.
Patti Smith hasn't stopped. Since the Year of the Monkey, she’s continued to tour, write, and advocate for the planet. Her journey reminds us that the "golden age" isn't a time in the past—it’s whenever we decide to pay attention. The world might be getting weirder, but as long as there are poets like Smith to document the strangeness, we might just be okay.