Letters to Kurt

by Eric Erlandson

"Nearly two decades after the death of Kurt Cobain, a friend and fellow musician not only continues to mourn his suicide, but also rages against the culture that he holds responsible. These 52 'letters' . . . combine the subject matter of the Byrds' 'So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star' with the fury of Allen Ginsberg's Howl . . . A catharsis for the writer and perhaps for the reader as well."
-- Kirkus Reviews

"A touching and enlightening collection of prose poems addressed to [Erlandson's] departed friend."
-- The San Francisco Bay Guardian

"Erlandson finally comes to terms with his loss in 52 prose-poem letters ostensibly addressed to Cobain in which he straightforwardly confronts his inner demons while offering personal reflections on food, drug abuse, death, and self-sabotage."-- Booklist

"The reverberations of Kurt's suicide last to this day, and have touched the lives of many. Dozens of people could have written their own version of this bracingly candid book; Eric Erlandson has written one, filled with rage and love, landmined with detail, that can stand for them all."
-- Michael Azerrad , author of Come As You The Story of Nirvana

"Eric was the spirit-boy in the Nirvana/Hole dynamic. Quiet, bemused, intelligent, and curiously intuitive to the power of hugging the devil, to say we will all be okay . . . Eric expresses how enchanting Kurt was, how the whole scene was, with his thoughtful, radical adult/prose love. Bring on the future, darling."-- Thurston Moore , musician

"Eric. He was always supportive, observing, in the thick of it. Hidden in plain sight . . . Without him, I can't imagine Seattle or L.A. or a dozen other places. This book is beautiful, brutal, brief. Happy-sad eloquence. Boy Scouts playing with the complimentary cologne in the heart of the ghost town. Listen to the man. He knows."
-- Everett True , author of The Biography

Letters to Kurt is an anguished, angry, and tender meditation on the octane and ether of rock and roll and its many sex, drugs, suicide, fame, and rage. It's part Dream Songs, part Bukowski, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and the Clash. Rants, reflections, and gunshot fill these fifty-two prose poems. They are raw, funny, sad, and searching. This will make a beautiful book for anyone who loved Nirvana and Hole and the time and place when their music changed everything. Ultimately, it's an elegy for Kurt and the "suicide idols" who tragically fail to find salvation in their amazing music.

Genres: Poetry, Music, Nonfiction

159 pages, Hardcover

First published March 27, 2012

About the author

ERIC ERLANDSON was born and raised in San Pedro, California. He is best known as cofounder, songwriter, and lead guitarist of the alternative rock band Hole, which he formed with Courtney Love. Their albums Pretty on the Inside, Live Through This, and Celebrity Skin achieved international recognition and success. Live Through This was named one of the top 100 albums of all time by Time magazine. Since the breakup of the band in 2002, Erlandson has been involved in a number of musical and literary projects. He has a BS in Economics from Loyola Marymount University and practices Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Marian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like Letters to Kurt. I really, really did. The premise sounded interesting and I figured this would be the one time in my life having no real allegiance to Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, or Hole would actually be a good thing. I wouldn't be going in expecting dirt only to be disappointed!

Yeaaaaaaaah. That plan didn't work out so well. I'm not big on the whole stream of consciousness style to begin with, but I've seen some people work their magic with it. Didn't really happen here.

And when she was good, she was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

Swap the genders and pretty much the way I felt while reading this. Every time I was about to give the book away to anyone, anyone at all, I'd stumble across a phrase that was just heartbreakingly beautiful or absurdly amusing in the best way possible. But things would slide back into horrid and I'd want to give up until once more, something wonderful would appear.

Not sure if this is simply a case of art I don't get or a time when an editor could have shaped things just enough to even the ratio of good to bad.

If you're looking for the ghost of Kurt, he can be found haunting certain passages but is rarely tangible for more than a fleeting second. I'm not sure if this counts as a plus or minus, as it's a fitting trick all things considered, but it's bound to annoy those paying for the book based on his name. Then again, maybe the joke's on them.

[Olgalijo · Rating 2 out of 5]

With a sad heart I have to say that I found this book difficult to stomach. The "letters in poetic prose" term used for it only disguises a bunch of angry ramblings. I bet that writing all that was really therapeutic for the author, but that doesn't make it worth publishing.

[Andi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it's the antihistamine, but I totally got this.

[Rachel Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't even know how to review a book like this. I think you either get it and love it, or are a bit confused. And I get it and love it. It is brilliant prose poetry, lyrical steam of consciousness. It's not really 52 straightforward "letters", but more like thoughts that you have to direct somewhere, so they end up a sort of conversation with someone who is gone.
If you want a celebrity memoir, a grunge tell-all, read something else. I don't know exactly who to recommend this to besides my younger self, but it was everything I have needed to read for a very long time

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not you Eric, it's me.
Eric might just be my favorite member of Hole, and Hole is one of my favorite bands still. Anyhow, sometimes this was just a bit too complicated for me (note English is not my main language so often the puns and trains of thought were a bit tricky). Still liked it though, so 3 stars.

[Jeri · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was poetic and not badly written, but after awhile it got annoying because the author is clearly trying to talk sh*t about his former bandmates and other celebrities, but he hides behind all these obnoxious metaphors as if it absolves him from being nothing more than a gossip. The book is very self-indulgent.

[Erin Tuzuner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crystallized treatise of apocalypse fetishists and their aftermath. The human impulse to ruminate runs counter to the exploding misery of dissatisfied mystics and prophets who running screaming into the void leaking ink, blood, and half chewed philosophies. Step lively.

[Corinne · Rating 2 out of 5]

subpar poetry and jibberish from Eric erlandson's mind. you learn he's into fruit dehydrating and what kind of poops he takes. not a whole lot about Kurt Cobain in here but there's references to courtney love.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I NEVER rate 1 star, hell I rarely rate 2 stars because author's put so much into a book. This is the 2nd time I've given a 1 star rating in the 1000+ books I've rated. I hated the other book so much I literally cringe & jerk away when I see it in a bookstore discard cheap section. This is worse. I'm mad I wasted 50 cents at Goodwill on it. I don't know what to do with it now because it's so bad I don't want to subject anyone else to spending 50 cents or even getting it free & wasting 2 hours on it & I can't make myself throw an undamaged book away.

This book is a giant FU to Courtney Love (I thought, "hey I can get with that") then it goes to great lengths to show she dicked him over in Hole, it's not just him sticking up for his "friend". The next big part is bad quotes from the lyrics of Metallica, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Aerosmith, Oasis, Bush, Alice in Chains, Rolling Stones & Counting Crows on top of Nirvana & more I'm sure I missed as well. Throw in some more horrible suicide note quotes too. Then we get him being a trash human being in general, he hates the US & the military & is even a dick towards Kurt's daughter. The "prose" is wretched, the worst I've ever read.

I kept reading because TWO times I thought, "oh this is good". But those were the only two, the rest was shit. Thank God it only took 2 hours maximum to read, but that's 2 hours I can't get back. Don't waste your time on this dumpster fire attempt at staying relevant & getting money. And please, please don't waste your money, even 50 cents on this!

[Britt · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is absolute garbage!

The writing is garbage. What he has to say about Kurt is garbage.

There’s nothing about Kurt in this book. It’s just some poser desperately trying to prove he can write, which he can’t.

It’s disrespectful, the way he talk about Kurt. And makes me absolutely hate this Eric Erlandson.

The shitty things Eric says in this book make me believe the conspiracy theories about Kurt being murdered. It makes me think Eric is the murderer and this book is his way of thumbing his nose at the world over it.

I hate that I bought this book. I hate that this book exists.

[Jeffrey Nichols · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had my eye on this book for a while and after reading two Nirvana books this month, I finally picked it up. I wasn't sure how it would be, but any expectations were off. This was an amazing book. It was raw, a bit cryptic, but not a straightforward explanation. This is grief coming out of tragedy, and I think anyone who has had grief especially from a suicide can understand it. I recommend this book to any Nirvana fan, and also to those suffering from grief.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Letters to Kurt was written by Eric Erlandson, who a close friend of both Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love.

I have to tell you that my first impressions of this book were not that great: I think that I was expecting more of a straightforward prose. But that was never the author's intension. He's written a thoughtful introduction to the project that explains both his relationship to Cobain and Love, and why he chose to wrote a series of prose poems to exorcise old demons, in response to one of his favorite books, Jim Harrison's 'Letters to Yesenin.'

There are 52 short prose poems in the book addressed to Erlandson's "muse", Kurt Cobain. After reading the first two poems, which were full of cliched (but not necessarily cliched in the context of this book) imagery about suicide, angst, and goth teen / vampire imagery, I rolled my eyes and said outloud "oh god, really?" just not sure if this book was going to be worth sticking with. For example:

"I found her on YouTube channeling you, her piercing black eyes not of my world. Not of yours, I hope. 'Wake up humanity, there are vampires!' she howls. Noshitsherlock."

And:

"Rule number one: overdose on frozen French toast, shove a shotgun into your mouth, and replace those mercury fillings with buckshot lead, splattering your zits over the smeared reflection of your hate."

But I think that this book rewards time and patience, because not all of the notes that it hits are the same. Some are angst-filled, but some are more quiet, filled with quiet epiphanies that arise out of the action of completing mundane tasks:

"I use my dehydrator to suck the life out of kale, berries, and mangoes, leaving the dry empty shell for our snacking. Time and love dehydrate us, water content reduced in slow, torturous increments until we're left prune fleshed and feeble."

The best moments in the book are the ones that evoke in me a memory of all of the feelings that I still associate with the nineties of righteous, empowered anger at things that are politically f***ed up and all of the things, like Facebook, which so insidiously keep you from living a full life. I think that that's what Kurt embodies in this book in someway, someone who lived life, for better and worse, fully. I enjoyed Erlandson's reflections on the LA Riots, and the very funny scene of Kurt being rejected from First Class on a plane for wearing torn jeans. But torn jeans stand, of course, for a flat-out rejection of a certain narrative of the world and the rules of that world and how things "should be." I found myself thinking "I remember when I felt that way, and you know, we were right."

One of the things that I really love about this book is that Erlandson's perspective and the language are honed and specific, and so different that what you typically see out there on poetry shelves. I think that a lot of contemporary poets write about the same subjects in the same way, and so Erlandson's voice is really refreshing.

I have to admit that I'm still, writing this, only partway through the book. I think that the form of the prose poem is probably not for everyone. Sometimes I'm not sure what Erlandson is referring to...the references fly above my head...but I think that as with other poems, you have to both go with the flow of the language but also give it a little time to soak in.

So, if you're both a fan of the music scene that Nirvana and Hole were at the center of, and you're up for giving the book a little bit of time, or if you just love poetry, I'd recommend it.

[Nicholas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I'd find the this collection of prose poems more interesting, even though I am not a full-fledged fan of Nirvana (there's a line in the book about how there are Nirvana fans and Pearl Jam fans and no cross-over between; I'm a rare case of someone who likes and dislikes some of each), but it was a bit too personal. Erlandson is basically shouting and ranting at the world in these poems, almost as if he doesn't expect anyone to read it, and doesn't want the readers to share his feelings. It's like saying "I'm hurt and angry" for 150 pages without even allowing that others might be angry too, let alone that there may be somewhere to go beyond it. However, that said, that attitude probably gives us a small insight into someone like Cobain, who probably had some of the same problems.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is for fans of experimental writing styles (think Allen Ginsberg or William S. Burroughs). The sentences are written in a stream-of-consciousness style, combining themes of depression, suicide, hostility, and vulnerability. Erlandson fills his prose poetry with gut-wrenching emotion, pop culture references, and surreal characters and settings.

I would highly recommend this book if you liked William S. Burrough's "My Eduction: A Book of Dreams" or Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." I won this as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer copy, and I really enjoyed it :)

[Justin · Rating 1 out of 5]

http://librarianaut.com/2012/07/05/bo...

[Frank · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting. There are no letters, but a collection of buddhist/beat poem/essays. I don't know. I didn't want to read them.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. I won't pretend to understand everything that was going on in this book but I loved the way Erlandson played around with words. Clever, angry, bitter, and honest.

[Ally Van Schilt · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some absolute gems in here, but it's really too bad they were hidden in some absolute rot.

[GrnMtnOpal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was moved by this book. It is dark and filled with emotion. Emotion I can relate to.