A review by moonyreadsbystarlight
Journals by Kurt Cobain
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
3.5
3.5? I feel like this is a weird thing to rate.
The Kurt Cobain journals are something I've been interested in for a while, but just now got to. And I came out of it with pretty mixed feelings.
This was mostly photocopied pages of his journals and other papers. It had rough drafts of songs, weird sketches, music video ideas, playlists, and best album lists. There were also letters (some sent and some never sent), beginnings of dark short stories, and journal entries. Some context was given about parts, but it was pretty minimal. The journals didn't even have an introduction or discussion of who had put these documents together.
The biggest thing I did get out of this was seeing more about his experience with stomach issues and chronic pain. He describes the toll that this took on his mental health and was the catalyst for his addiction. In a similar vein, it was profound and disturbing to see how he was treated by the press amidst these issues. It gave me a lot of perspective on the things I've heard about him, especially towards the end of his life.
However, seeing so much in the book with little context made me really question whether or not this should have even been published like this. Like if someone found my partial rough drafts of stories that I wrote when I was 20, I would not want them to be photocopied and spread around posthumously. There were also several things that just would have really benefited from more context or explanation than was given in the notes at the end. I wonder how much of it he would reword and rework, give context to, or omit altogether (especially with bits like the ableism in many parts; he did have big moral convictions around social injustice so I can't help but wonder what he would change or correct if he'd had proper education about it).
It was an interesting read, dark, hard to be in his head (the poor guy had mostly water placements all over his astrology chart). I'm interested to know more about him as a person and artist, but the jury is still out on whether or not this is a really good way to learn about it.
The Kurt Cobain journals are something I've been interested in for a while, but just now got to. And I came out of it with pretty mixed feelings.
This was mostly photocopied pages of his journals and other papers. It had rough drafts of songs, weird sketches, music video ideas, playlists, and best album lists. There were also letters (some sent and some never sent), beginnings of dark short stories, and journal entries. Some context was given about parts, but it was pretty minimal. The journals didn't even have an introduction or discussion of who had put these documents together.
The biggest thing I did get out of this was seeing more about his experience with stomach issues and chronic pain. He describes the toll that this took on his mental health and was the catalyst for his addiction. In a similar vein, it was profound and disturbing to see how he was treated by the press amidst these issues. It gave me a lot of perspective on the things I've heard about him, especially towards the end of his life.
However, seeing so much in the book with little context made me really question whether or not this should have even been published like this. Like if someone found my partial rough drafts of stories that I wrote when I was 20, I would not want them to be photocopied and spread around posthumously. There were also several things that just would have really benefited from more context or explanation than was given in the notes at the end. I wonder how much of it he would reword and rework, give context to, or omit altogether (especially with bits like the ableism in many parts; he did have big moral convictions around social injustice so I can't help but wonder what he would change or correct if he'd had proper education about it).
It was an interesting read, dark, hard to be in his head (the poor guy had mostly water placements all over his astrology chart). I'm interested to know more about him as a person and artist, but the jury is still out on whether or not this is a really good way to learn about it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Abortion, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, Medical trauma, Drug use, Chronic illness, Sexism, Eating disorder, and Drug abuse
While the racism and sexism were there because he spoke out against them, the ableism was there in a lot of the writing, including the r-slur (unfortunately common for the time). There is also a lot of weird graphic violence in the short stories.