Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love [Hardcover]

Courtney Love (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 31, 2006

A multi-textual memoir chronicling the life of one of our most potent pop icons

Groundbreaking rock musician. Award-winning actress. Perceptive songwriter and author. Mother. Wife of a rock god. Fashionista and trendsetter. Provocateur. In each and every one of these roles Courtney Love has demonstrated a wholehearted commitment to her art, and an intense drive and a lust for life that have made her a star and a celebrity icon—but have also led her into some unwise, uncharted, and even dangerous territory. Simultaneously candid and enigmatic, Love has a mordant wit and vivid intelligence matched in intensity only by the extraordinary life she has led, from a bleak early childhood through great fame and terrible heartbreak to the present day. By turns exhilarating and unsettling, this is a story told for the first time in Dirty Blonde.

Composed of an astonishing and eclectic collection of deeply personal artifacts including personal letters, childhood records, poetry, diary entries, song lyrics, fanzines, show flyers, other original writings, and never-before-seen photographs, Dirty Blonde leads us through the unimaginable highs and the despairing lows of one of the most compelling and creative figures in the world of popular culture. Through these diaries we see Love’s accomplishments, her mistakes, her history, and her bright future in a whole new light. From her upbringing in Oregon through her years living in Japan, New Zealand, and London, from her career highs with Hole and as a Hollywood leading lady to her personal heartbreak and struggle, Dirty Blonde is Love laid bare—a wholly fascinating portrait of a fierce and insightful woman with an unblinking worldview and a determination to express herself no matter the cost.

Editorial Reviews

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.)
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Review

"Intimate . . . A collage of a life spent in pursuit of validation, fueled by her relentless creativity . . . This book may be the most direct and honest work that Love has done to date." —Jac Chebatoris, Newsweek 

“Exhibits a heretofore unappreciated level of self-knowledge.” —Rebecca Winters Keegan, Time
 

“This is a pastiche, an assemblage, the most Barthian of texts. Yet it is undeniably a reflection of Love's psyche, confirming that Love's allure lies in her glorious disarray . . . She is not from the starlet factory where they mint Jojos and Rhiannas and other girls who can do that sweet-yet-sexy-yet-a-little-tough thing. She comes from an era when women played their own instruments and wrote their own songs, but she's not one of those Jewel-ish whiners or Sheryl Crow lite rockers. She's the real deal: a grungy girl punk rock star . . . These days, when celebrity is cultivated and managed à la [Jessica and Ashlee Simpson], Courtney Love's feminist status starts to look really radical: No man has ever had that hold on her. Have we seen her be self-promoting? A million times. Have we seen her naked? Sure. But we've never seen her bow down to anyone or anything, including public opinion.” —Lisa Levy, Salon

 

“An often fascinating document . . . Wade into its depths with caution and you will still get pulled under.” —Mikael Wood, TimeOut New York

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber; 1st edition (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865479593
• ISBN-13: 978-0865479593
• Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 8.8 x 11 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #384,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 92 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Dirty, dirty "Blonde" November 1, 2006

By E. A Solinas HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format: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.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fan Will Treasure This Book But Be Aware of What You Are Buying November 20, 2006

By Dorrie Wheeler

Format:Hardcover

Dirty Blonde The Diaries of Courtney Love is a hard cover coffee table style type of book. It's similar in design and content style to Heidi Fleiss book Pandering; meaning the book is made up of photocopies handwritten notes, clippings, and photographs. The first thing I will say is if you purchase this book hoping to sit down and read Courtney Love's diary, you might be a bit disappointed. A better title for this book would be Dirty Blonde, A Collection of Clippings from Courtney Love. Yes, the book does contain handwritten notes, but there is no consistency. One can assume that the pieces of paper are in chronological order but there are no dates. Many of the pages just seem to be filled with doodles, and random words and thoughts. It's the kind of thing that if you weren't famous and you put that kind of a thing in a book it would be considered to not have merit because it makes no sense.

Now before it seems like I am coming down to hard on Dirty Blonde, let me explain. I am a huge fan of Courtney Love's music and think that Dirty Blonde is a must have for the Courtney Love fan. Just don't pick it up expecting to actually read a consistent diary as the book is primarily made up of random pieces of papers. Some of the diary like notes are interesting but as a reader what frustrated me is that I didn't what time period the notes came from or what era in her life. Another thing I too much didn't like about the book, is that it's great to see Courtney's hand written notes, they just didn't always seem very legible to me. So there were times I struggled to read the notes. Then after I finish the entire book I find a section titled "Notes& Chronology" that details the dates and origins of the notes. A foot note or some kind of indication on the actual page would have been nice.

There are some really great pictures of Courtney in the book. It's a book that a Courtney Love fan will treasure. The book provides great insight into her mind and thoughts. I enjoyed the book but I will be honest, Courtney's author's note is so lucid and clear I would love to read an actual autobiography or book from Courtney one day.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Raiding Courtney's Closet February 10, 2007

By Jessica Winney

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Even as a long-time fan of Courtney Love and her music and a person who greatly anticipated the publication of this book, overall I was very disappointed. I found myself asking questions like, "What is the real meaning of this book?," "Why did she choose to publish it?," and "Who was her intended audience?" Although I expected it to be presented in a "diary" format as described in the title, I did not expect it to be completely devoid of any real text (apart from what is written in the actual diary entries, and even they need clarification because Courtney's handwriting is often barely legible) and substantively lacking in captions for the photographs. There is little description of any kind present in the book to clarify what is supposed to be "going on" in the pages of collected scraps, journal and diary entries, letters, juvenile hall records, etc. To a reader that may be unfamiliar with the life and times of Courtney Love (and believe me, there are such people), this book is largely meaningless as a reference book. The paraphernalia of her life is taken to be self-explanatory when in fact it is not. The reader is left with no idea as to the real significance of the items that Courtney has chosen to display in the book (she makes huge assumptions here that her readers already know about her life), and the items don't really tell readers who are already familiar with her life anything that they didn't already know.

I think that any public personality who chooses to publish his or her personal diaries and letters in book format faces this problem. Unless some amount of explanation/clarification of the content is provided to the reader, the diaries and photographs have no real meaning beyond what they mean to the person who compiled them. If "Dirty Blonde" was intended to change the public's perception of Courtney Love, or if it was intended to further understanding of her life and character, I believe that it has failed on both counts. This book is the literary equivalent of allowing millions of people to rifle through every closet that you've ever had from childhood to the present, and then asking them to make sense out of what they find.