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Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love
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Music Books > Bay City Rollers > Item 2
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Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love
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by Courtney Love
Sales Rank: 69597
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List Price: $20.00
$13.60
At Amazon
on 12-29-2007.
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Features
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Faber & Faber; Reprint edition October 30, 2007
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0865479739
ISBN-13: 978-0865479739
Product Dimensions:
10.4 x 8.4 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Love writes in her introduction: "I have always said that I would never write a book, and I really haven't." It's true—"diaries" is something of a misnomer, as "scrapbooks" would more accurately describe the collection of old photographs, hand-scrawled song lyrics and other documents that fill these pages. The materials assembled by Stander cover every phase of the rock star's "wild pirate life," from a failed childhood audition for The Mickey Mouse Club to an e-mail exchange with Lindsay Lohan about dealing with negative press coverage. (The compilation is so up-to-date it even includes her shocked reactions to the revelations about JT Leroy.) Along the way there are mimeographed flyers for early Hole concerts, a picture of the actual heart-shaped box that inspired Kurt Cobain to write the Nirvana song and photo after photo of Love herself, from candid backstage shots to more polished celebrity portraits. A foreword by Carrie Fisher and an afterword by political activists Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards (Manifesta) each, in their own way, celebrate Love as an unrestrained feminist, but the best way to understand her may be to plunge directly into the raw materials. One thing's for sure: you really have never seen a celebrity memoir like this. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Harper's Bazaar
"Extraordinary and fascinating."
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
This review is from: Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love (Hardcover)
Professional widow, rock star, all-around exhibitionist. You hate her for her craziness and being Kurt Cobain's widow, or you adore her for her nutty unself-consciousness. Sadly, "Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love" won't add much to the public perception of Love. Instead, it only reinforces what the public already knows about Love, except it's in fragmented, squiggly notes and pasted with little photographs. It's somewhat interesting, but only if you want to read every list and ticket. "Diaries" is a rather loose term -- this isn't a journal, but a collection of journal entries, letters, poems, songs, and reflections on herself, only some of which make sense ("I am not here as a muse for those Revolting old Ghosts from my Pasts"), pasted into more-or-less chronological order. It outlines her troubled childhood and modelling days, to her life as a rocker in the band Hole ("We have 3 Guitars. Jill ar bass player played in Sylvia Jincos and Super Heroines. me, I started Babes in Toyland...), and her marriage to legendary rocker Kurt Cobain. And, of course, life after his tragic death. Aside from the stuff Love wrote, "Dirty Blonde" is littered with little visual patches -- pictures of classic blonde actresses, the "heart shaped box," pictures of guitars, medieval tapestry, and a resume of acting experience. And, of course, LOTS and LOTS of photos of Love and her family. "Dirty Blonde" does reveal little things about Love. She loves punk, makeup, bleached blondes and a wide variety of books and... uh, other stuff. Teapots, Yeats, and she hates "Nirvanamania." But little things are all you'll get -- little fragments of Love's mind, which never quite pull together into a whole. It's pretty obvious that she has a good mind and is quite smart, but the content becomes crazier as the book goes on, until it seems like she's talking at random. Whole sections of her life are left out; by these letters, Love jumps from pre-adolescence right into adulthood. Unless she was in a coma for several years, this seems unlikely. And because these aren't really diaries -- where she would record her inner thoughts -- it really doesn't reveal anything about her soul. At the end, nothing more is really known about Love, except her likes and dislikes, and that she desperately wants to be adored. The big experiences of her life are only touched on -- and the sad thing is, when Love does go below the surface (such as her recollection of the last day of Kurt's life), it's deeply touching. The photos are also kind of a mixed bag -- most of them are just pictures of Love posing in skimpy clothing. But there are some very sweet family pictures, including Kurt grinning at the camera, and some very cute shots of a baby Frances Bean. A crazy quilt of recollections and fragments, "Dirty Blonde" is a fairly interesting read with some wacky revelations, but it won't add or detract from anyone's view of Courtney Love. At the end, it's only little bits of her.
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Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love
Updated on 12-29-2007.
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