Eric Erlandson

I must have misread the synopsis when I chose this in the early reviewers list. I started reading it soon after I received it and put it down quite quickly because I felt a bad review coming on. I've picked it up again because it ended up in the donation pile and yes, time didn't heal those earlier wounds. I could also be biased having grown up in the "Grunge" era and enjoying the music, but as a child of former addicts, never got into the martyrdom over Kurt Cobain. Try it if Nirvana was your favorite band of all time, but if not, Patty Smith's latest book is a much better find.… (meer)

Letters to Kurt is not a bad effort--it's just not particularly great. Erlandson admits to once being the lover of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain future wife Courtney Love and it seems as if he feels some distance from the now departed songwriter. Whether or not it's the sense of coming in second in that competition his former liaison does seem to inform this work. I agree that some of these prose poems are kind of uneven. He can't quite seem to love or altogether hate his rival and that doesn't lift the book to greater heights.… (meer)