“M Train,” the new memoir from singer Patti Smith, is weird. The follow-up to her acclaimed 2010 memoir “Just Kids,” which detailed her early years in New York City and her friendship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe, “M Train” is meandering and dream-like, weaving in and out of stories with very little structure. The form is diaristic, and sometimes she simply lists her movements in detail (“The sky was already dark when I got to West Fourth Street Station. I stopped at Mamoun’s and got a falafel to go”). New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani called it “achingly beautiful” in her review, but, well, it’s achingly something — let’s just leave it at that. Here’s a list of the five strangest moments in the book.“The Killing”The most prominent thread that runs through “M Train” is Smith’s obsession with the now-cancelled AMC television series “The Killing.” Detective Sarah Linden, the character played by Mireille Enos, means so much to Smith that, she writes, “she is dearer to me than most people.” At one point late in the book she dreams of herself in Linden’s place, on a crime scene with Detective Stephen Holder (played by Joel Kinnaman).But “The Killing” isn’t the only television show that dominates Smith’s thoughts. She writes of the “warm drone” of a “Law & Order” marathon; the eerie coincidence of watching an episode of “Person of Interest” and how, two nights later, the show was filming on her street; the joys of viewing two episodes of “CSI: Miami” in a row; her love for British mystery dramas, including “The Saint,” “Detective Frost,” “Whitechapel,” and “Cracker,” even debating extending a stay in London not to miss a marathon of the latter.Robbie ColtraneSpeaking of “Cracker,” there is an appearance in “M Train” of the star of that show, the British actor Robbie Coltrane. Smith and Coltrane have an encounter in the elevator of the same London hotel where Smith debated extending her trip to watch his show. As the doors of the elevator open, Coltrane appears, and Smith is so shocked that she forgets to get on the elevator. “Can you imagine the odds of such an encounter?” she later says to her floral bedspread (Smith talks to a lot of inanimate objects in the book).CoffeeSmith is a caffeine junkie. She writes of a trip to Mexico where she was looking for coffee that was “grown in the mountains surrounding Veracruz,” which William Burroughs told her was the best coffee in the world. (She finds it, and calls it “transporting.”) But Smith’s favorite spot is the now-closed West Village coffee shop ’Ino Café. She even has a favorite seat, and if it’s occupied when she arrives she hides in the bathroom and waits until it’s empty. At her table, she reads and writes — at one point a long poem dedicated to the author Roberto Bolano — and when her favorite waiter quits to open a place in Rockaway Beach, she follows him, eventually buying a small house near the beach.Pat SajakThe host of “Wheel of Fortune” comes to Smith in a dream. The night before departing for Mexico, Sajak appears “wearing a gold signet ring on his pinky” and turning cards. Then Smith remembers that it’s actually Vanna White, not Sajak, who turns the letters on the board, and starts to question if it was actually Sajak who was in her dream.Continental Drift ClubEarly in the memoir, Smith gets a mysterious letter stamped “CDC.” We later find out that the letters stand for the Continental Drift Club, a sort-of secret society formed in the 1980s by a Danish meteorologist. There are only 27 members, all of whom “have pledged their dedication to the perpetuation of remembrance, specifically in regard to Alfred Wegner, who pioneered the theory of continental drift.” The group meets up in random places around the globe, their gatherings so secret that you can imagine they are not very happy with Smith for writing about them in her book.
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