M Train

M Train is a 2015 memoir by American poet, singer, and author Patti Smith (born 1946). It is Smith’s second memoir; her first was 2010’s Just Kids. This book details Smith’s marriage to Fred “Sonic” Smith (1948-1994), a guitarist. It also covers her response to Fred’s sudden death, which was followed almost immediately by Smith’s brother’s death. An exploration of emptiness, grief, and connection, M Train talks extensively about Smith’s travel experiences in Central and South America, Europe, and Japan. It also tackles the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York City in 2012. The memoir is not, strictly speaking, written in verse, but it does have a poetic quality to it. In 2017, Smith received a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album for her audiobook recording of M Train. The memoir received positive reviews.

This guide refers to the 2015 Borzoi Book edition of M Train.

Content Warning: The text and this guide focus heavily on grief and loss. Some sections reference suicide and natural disasters.

Summary

Smith lives in Greenwich Village, New York City. She dreams about a cowpoke, or cowboy, who tells her that it is quite difficult to write about nothing. Most days, she goes to Café ’Ino and orders black coffee, brown toast, and olive oil. Her favorite barista, Zak, is hoping to open his own café; she offers to help fund his endeavor, as she once tried to open a café of her own. She gave up and instead married Fred and traveled with him to French Guiana. There, she collected stones from a former prison. She hoped to give them to French writer Jean Genet, who wrote about the prison. Smith and Fred’s travels included some potentially dangerous encounters, but she recalls the adventures fondly.

Back in the present, Smith spends November and December alone trying to write. She remembers her distant father and fishing trips with Fred before finally opening several weeks’ worth of mail. One letter is from the Continental Drift Club (CDC), a secret society devoted to polar researcher Alfred Wegener. Smith is a member, and the society has invited her to give a talk in Berlin. Smith recalls an earlier meeting of the society in Reykjavik. After the meeting, she unexpectedly got the chance to interview chess legend Bobby Fischer; the encounter was strange.

In the present, she travels to Berlin for her talk. She tries to start a discussion on the last moments of Wegener’s life, but she inadvertently starts a heated debate among the CDC members, most of whom are scientists. She spends a few more days in Berlin, mostly visiting cafés. On her way home, her flight is delayed, so she spends a few nights in London, briefly running into actor Robbie Coltrane in an elevator. 

Back in New York, Smith contemplates her friendship with Beat poet William Burroughs, as well as the process of writing. She remembers life with Fred, comparing her time with him and their young children to her more solitary present life. At a café, she hears “What a Wonderful World,” which makes her feel emotional. Again, she reminisces about her life with Fred. They lived in Detroit in 1979, sleeping at odd hours. After their trip to French Guiana, Fred got his pilot’s license.

On St. Patrick’s Day in the present, it snows, reminding Smith of a similar St. Patrick’s Day from her childhood when she was recovering from scarlet fever. She was close with her younger sister and brother. In the present, she reads Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and falls in love with the story, imagining visiting Japan to find the house from the book. Though she cannot enter the world of the book, she can imagine it. She also imagines connecting with writers and historical figures she admires, including Goethe and Schiller. 

Smith receives a letter asking her to give a talk at Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo’s house in Mexico. When she was younger, she traveled to Mexico to see Casa Azul, as Kahlo’s work had a big impact on her. When she arrived, she found that it was closed for renovations. Crushed, she sought out the best coffee in Veracruz instead. This time, Smith gets very sick just before her talk, but she still delivers it.

Back home, Zak’s café opens on Rockaway Beach. Being by the water reminds Smith of the time she and Fred bought a boat and tried to fix it up, only to learn that it was unsalvageable. Lightning struck a tree in their yard, and it fell and destroyed the boat anyway. Smith finds a small, run-down property for sale on the boardwalk. Despite its terrible condition, she works hard for a summer to make enough money to buy it outright. The last trip she makes that summer is to Mexico. On the way back, she loses her copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, to her great disappointment.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy hits New York, destroying the Rockaway Beach boardwalk and Zak’s café but remarkably leaving Smith’s new house intact. Smith turns 66 and contemplates the slow process of rebuilding after disaster. She remembers Fred’s death from heart failure just after Halloween in 1994. She loses a black coat that she loves.

She decides to visit Japan, as she has several friends there. She has been helping one of them raise funds for children orphaned in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. For her first few days in Japan, she stays in her hotel, thinking and writing. She then meets friends who bring her to a cemetery to see the graves of influential Japanese writers and filmmakers. Although she is only a few miles from the house in Murakami’s novel, she does not try to look for it. She returns home via Los Angeles, where she loses her luggage. She also loses her notebook, which contains photographs of Sylvia Plath’s grave, but someone sends it back to her. 

Smith visits Café ’Ino again and learns that it is about to close down. She has one last coffee there. The owner gives her the table and chair where she always sits. A letter arrives from the CDC: The society is being disbanded. Smith burns all the memorabilia she has from the CDC.

In the spring, she visits Tangier and meets some friends. She finally delivers the stones from the prison to Jean Genet’s grave; she did not get to give them to him while he was alive. She remembers an earlier visit to Morocco when she interviewed composer and author Paul Bowles not long before his death.

Smith recalls Fred’s funeral, where she sang “What a Wonderful World.” Her brother died suddenly just a month later. The Killing, a TV show Smith loves, gets canceled abruptly. Smith thinks about all the things she has lost. Though they are gone, she can still feel their impact. She dreams that Fred saves her from danger and realizes that the cowpoke in her dreams is a childhood toy Fred once lost and then found again. She ends on an optimistic but wistful note, realizing that what she has lost can find its way back to her eventually.