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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Read the book when it first came out and now around 10 years later I gave the audible a go. There will never be a day I don’t have respect for Kurt Cobain.
I loved this book up until page 157, when the author introduces seminal feminists Tobi Vail and Kathleen from Bikini Kill with this sentence: "... He'd listen for hours to Tobi and her friend Kathleen Hanna prattle on about sexism ...." Prattle on?! This needlessly condescending pejorative ripped me out of the narrative and made me question the author's judgment throughout the rest of the book.
Indeed, there was a lot missing. For example, we're really given little understanding of Kurt's intellectual development, and yet he's suddenly reading Naked Lunch (no mean feat), giving Courtney Bronte and Wilde novels and talking about Hamlet to EMTs after he ODs? What? Where did any of that come from? There's also little insight into his creative process.
Kurt was a great artist, yet this book presents him mostly as a sour, disturbed, whiny jerk with little curiosity or joy, and whose prevailing mission in life was suicide. (Yet, bafflingly, one of his closest friends, who accompanied him to buy the shotgun that killed him, is quoted as saying, "If he was suicidal, he sure hid it from me.") Lots of his old friends describe him as sweet, smart and thoughtful. Why the disconnect? And surely there were other things that made him happy. Did he like traveling? What was it like for him to go from living in his car one year to living at the Four Seasons the next? What motivated him other than music and drugs?
Unlike most others, I didn't mind the artistic license Cross takes at the end to present Kurt's POV. I felt like he was trying to make sense of the evidence and produce a likely scenario for Kurt's last days.
Still, there was a lot to love here. I felt like Cross was really trying to tell Kurt's story in a meaningful, artful way - without emphasizing scandal and salaciousness, which I appreciate and he mostly succeeds at. But I had some misgivings that make me really want to try the Azerrad bio to compare their approaches.
Indeed, there was a lot missing. For example, we're really given little understanding of Kurt's intellectual development, and yet he's suddenly reading Naked Lunch (no mean feat), giving Courtney Bronte and Wilde novels and talking about Hamlet to EMTs after he ODs? What? Where did any of that come from? There's also little insight into his creative process.
Kurt was a great artist, yet this book presents him mostly as a sour, disturbed, whiny jerk with little curiosity or joy, and whose prevailing mission in life was suicide. (Yet, bafflingly, one of his closest friends, who accompanied him to buy the shotgun that killed him, is quoted as saying, "If he was suicidal, he sure hid it from me.") Lots of his old friends describe him as sweet, smart and thoughtful. Why the disconnect? And surely there were other things that made him happy. Did he like traveling? What was it like for him to go from living in his car one year to living at the Four Seasons the next? What motivated him other than music and drugs?
Unlike most others, I didn't mind the artistic license Cross takes at the end to present Kurt's POV. I felt like he was trying to make sense of the evidence and produce a likely scenario for Kurt's last days.
Still, there was a lot to love here. I felt like Cross was really trying to tell Kurt's story in a meaningful, artful way - without emphasizing scandal and salaciousness, which I appreciate and he mostly succeeds at. But I had some misgivings that make me really want to try the Azerrad bio to compare their approaches.
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
I found the look into Kurt Cobain's life compellingly told, beautiful and haunting. Cross interjected everything that needed to be told and folded it into words that carried exactly how tragic his life really was.
seems to be one of the more believable biographies about kurt cobain.
Kurt's life was so sad... He was a creative genius, but he really was an asshole. I realize the author took creative license with the suicide, and that we'll never really know what happened. But I feel like Charles R. Cross did Kurt justice. And I enjoyed the biography overall.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
dark
informative
inspiring
tense
slow-paced