8.6 /10 1 Votes
4.5/5 Barnes & Noble Language English Originally published 1 November 2002 Genre Autobiography Editor Julie Grau | 4/5 Goodreads Country United States ISBN 978-1-57322-232-7 Publisher Riverhead Books OCLC 50333745 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Publication date 2002 Hardcover, 2003 Paperback Media type Print (Paperback and Hardcover) Pages 280 (hardcover)
294 (paperback) Similar Nirvana books, Biographies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Journals is a collection of writings and drawings by Kurt Cobain, the late former lead singer and guitarist of Nirvana. Though the content is undated, it is arranged in approximately chronological order. It was published in hardcover by Riverhead Books in November 2002, and in paperback by Riverhead Books in November 2003. Journals opened at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list (non-fiction). It contains scrawled notes, drafted letters, shopping lists, and drawings by Cobain.
Reception
Seattle Weekly News said this: "The journals are like an exploded diagram of a tormented soul, a maelstrom of self-pity, intolerant pride, morbid introspection, ingenious self-delusion, merciless self-knowledge, showbiz revulsion, starstruck effusion, Faustian ambition, otherworldly detachment, and an iron will helpless to help itself. Packed into 280 pages are shocking confessions, sweetly eloquent letters to brilliant friends, hard-nosed band plans, fulminating political screeds, obscene cartoons, haunting video treatments, and lyrical poetry of tremulous Romantic sensitivity, Bukowskian crudity, dadaist flippancy, and modernist opacity." Furthermore, its release reportedly polarized fans, some of whom felt it constituted an invasion of Cobain's privacy, and others of whom saw it as a unique opportunity to better understand him.