Once upon a life: Jennifer Egan

One minute she was in the back of a Jaguar; the next she was spraying graffiti on San Francisco pavements. Author Jennifer Egan reflects on how Patti Smith's wild music rode roughshod into her high-school daysThere was a leader, of course. I'll call her V: a scholarship student at our private high school. She'd moved to San Francisco recently from Alaska, and lived with her mother in a small downtown apartment. V's mother was not like the mothers I'd grown up knowing: she was in her mid-30s, div...

Read full article Share article