‘Just Kids’, one of my favorite books of 2010 written by one of my rock and roll heroes, gets the recognition it deserves.

The rock musician Patti Smith won the National Book Award for nonfiction on Wednesday night for “Just Kids,” a sweetly evocative memoir of her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe and life in the bohemian New York of the 1960s and ’70s.
Accepting the award to applause and cheers, Ms. Smith — clearly the favorite of the night — choked up as she recalled her days as a clerk in the Scribner’s bookstore in Manhattan.

Read the article in the New York Times.

Update. From the Village Voice on Patti and The National Book Award:

Typically at the National Book Awards, the books most likely to sell are the ones most likely to take home the prizes. But Smith doesn’t fit in at all with the typical mold of a National Book Award winner. Plenty of insiders had written off Smith’s book as a Bob Dylan’s Chronicles-esque recollection of her time in New York, whose strength is its stories and not its writing. It made the surprise of hearing Smith’s name called all the better.

Smith was shocked. She shuffled up to the stage from her table and started to speak. “I’ve loved books all of my life,” she started out, noting that when she used to stock books in the city, she always paid attention to the National Book Award-winners, and dreamed about taking home an award. “I used to wonder what it would feel like,” Smith teared up. It was unexpected and emotional. “Thank you for letting me find out,” she finished, before adding one last aside that got an ovation from the crowd:

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”