Man, I wish I hadn't read the excerpts in Newsweek of the Kurt Cobain journals. I didn't want to read them but I couldn't not. Kind of like watching Fear Factor.
The journals are terrible. This is a prime example of when not to learn too much about people whose work you admire. Kurt wrote on a 9th grade level, and was incredibly self-involved and confused about his own beliefs and agendas. He couldn't spell the word heroin, couldn't punctuate, and didn't have the foggiest about the difference between the word "you're" or "your". His metaphors in these writings (and in some of his lyric scribblings -- you should read the first version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" -- yikes!) are as bad as high school gothic horse poetry.
Here's what I came away with:
1. A lot of kids are going to read this book and think his ideas are profound, and that his struggles with drugs and emotional problems helped to make him a great artist (or at least cool).
2. The manifesto by the dude who was putting bombs in mailboxes (in the shape of a smiley face) was more coherent and contained better ideas and thoughts than these pathetic ramblings.
3. What a selfish prick to leave his child fatherless because he "can't stay here anymore".
4. What a whore Courtney Love was for collecting $4 million for the publication of her dead husband's personal scribblings, which were never meant to be seen, one would hope.
5. What a shitty thing for a widow to unleash on the world as their child starts to interact with others in society.
6. Heroin is bad.
I hope that most people will come away from reading these thinking the same things. I really don't want this to become some kind of bible to misfit kids with no direction. I would almost rather them read Jim Morrison's horrible poetry.
