Customer Reviews

Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

First of all, don't buy, read or review books about people you despise, hate etc. That is simply stupid! For fans, this is a goldmine, and if you read carefully, between the pictures, the collages, the icons, and the colors there is a wounded soul, probably beyond repair. And there is much, much more that she would not reveal, leaving it to the frankly boring and moralistic dissection of tabloids, gossip web sites, and haters everywhere. She must be past caring by now.

This is a bold, tough, courageous woman, but also somebody who should have received the love, care and nurturing she craved at the right time. So she had the courage to look in all the wrong places, and she plunged deep in, while most of the public could only sit there and point fingers. The hypocrites, the prudes, the ones who accuse (still! Hello? Could you get OVER it, please?) her of getting away with murder.

Yesterday I met Courtney Love in person at a book signing. She is definitely clean, still very beautiful, funny, witty. You would never tell that she had the life she had. It's not just whatever makeup and plastic surgery, she might have had: it's the vibe she gives out, her lack of pretension, her being real, no matter how much her appearance or style might have changed. Those are costumes. She is more than a survivor, she is unbreakable! And I listened to the new material...it is really lived, sad, and raw, much like the ballads of Marianne Faithfull, who, despite battling many of the same demons, was never obstracized and considered "uncool" like Courtney.

To those who want "something new"...This is what she was ready to share, and we should accept her limits. If you look closely, it is a lot.
I wish her the very best. We need more people who, like Courtney, have the courage of admitting their mistakes, their pain, their failures and despair, suffering years of public derision and humiliation, but who can pick up the pieces raise from their ashes, and hold their head high, rather than the respectable,honorable, fair and balanced filth that we see around us every day.

I was really pleasantly surprised when I opened this book! I expected it to be her biography in full, but instead it's her diary entries laid out in a very nice, girlie way. Lots of pink and flowers and clippings. It really gives an insight to her life and what she thinks. I found it very interesting that on one of the pages she writes that she doesn't have any friends and that she feels like she don't even has any friends in her own band. She must feel so alienated. God what a life. In many ways I think that her life (after reading the CL book by Poppy Z Brite) looks very much like Nancy Spungen's. She included her own suicide note, but not Kurt's suicide note to her. I also find it very fascinating to look at the pictures, esp the page with all black and white photos of her and Kurt posing. He must have been one unhappy guy. His smile seemed forced in every shot. After reading one of the books about Kurt Cobain I realise that he was probably depressed most of his life. But going back to Courtney: it's a very nice book and you can look at it for ages. It seems like she loves her daughter very much, there are sweet little notes about Frances in there, probably what keeps her going. This is a great book.

I liked this book but wasn't aware that it was all in Diary form. I Still liked it but didn't love it.

I've always been a Courtney Love/ Kurt Cobain fan and looked forward to this book. I was VERY disappointed with it. It's supposed to be made like a "scrapbook" and there are handwritten notes, etc. throughout the book which would be nice if Courtney's handwriting were legible. It's terribly messy and the book is put together badly too. Everything is scattered, nothing is in order, pictures and notes are upside down, sideways, etc. having to turn the book every which way just to see things. Nothing makes sense in this book and she even says she didn't see the reason for doing the book at all. A BIG disappointment! :-(

I was a little disappointed in the actual amount of reading material. The book is filled with pictures and keepsake stuff but not that much writing.

Good Quality. Not as good as I had thought it would be. Too "scrap booky". I thought it was going to be an autobiography.

Its a nice book, specially if you are a big fan of CL or if you are curious about her life. It is a very difficult book to read because it all comes written by her own hand, and being honest, she does not have nice handwritting. But its intresting when you get use to her handwritting.